Beauty and Beast
by Stelmarya
Summary: [Translation] Snape/Hermione after war against Voldemort. Hermione looked at the illustration of her storybook: the Beast in his aggressive stance, claws ready, violent... and she thought of Snape.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer: **Nothing you see here actually belongs to me. All credits to J. K. Rowling for the universe and Gato Azul for the great plot.

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**1**

**Prologue**

Floating sheets, silent hands hanging from stretchers, rocks raised until they formed, in their union, a piece of demolished wall.

Filch swept uselessly; the huge pieces of stone that had been walls would not budge under the weak movements of his broom.

Harry looked around; hurt ones, dead ones, people running and talking lively, agitated, a strange mix of optimism and pain penetrated in the remains of the castle. The war was over, but now they had to walk through the unprecedented grief of friends, teachers, family…

Ron and Hermione sitting in the floor, looking at each other in the middle of the coming and going of others, of those others who run from door to door with arms full of bandages and bottles, of those others who entered the Great Hall without making any noise, faces stained and blurred, crying, some strangely smiling, looking around.

A bunch of glass was scattered around the young survivor's feet. He looked at them as if they were beetle's eyes, blue, green, red, shining on the floor; he made them float around himself, uniting them again in the stained glass they once were, the stained glass that was rebuilt thanks to him.

Harry could barely breathe under the staggering feeling he experienced as he watched death and life mixed in such way.

The castle almost destroyed, the old friends hugging each other. Madam Pomfrey went around covering one by one the lifeless faces; then they were a path of white sheets in the middle of the hall.

Abeforth was drinking coffee, his old eyes floating in the light that was beginning to take dominion over the place. Dawn broke; the wizards seemed to be unable to choose between relief or pain. They didn't celebrate, for the fallen hadn't even gotten cold yet; nonetheless, they smiled in silence, a bit happy and a bit ashamed of having survived.

An abandoned body flashed in his mind. Remembering Snape created a pressure in his throat, as if someone had suddenly pulled all the air from him. He could picture him, he could picture blurrily the cape lying on the floor, like a devil's wings that were spreading for the teacher, that was swallowing him.

Harry walked to the front of the hall and stood there, like Dumbledore, like Snape himself, and thought about what they could've seen while they were standing there, in that same spot. Would they see the same things as him? Responsibility, an overwhelming responsibility for the people in front of him, for Hogwarts' students, their faces lightened up by the candles in the first day of class, the darkened faces Snape may have seen. Harry had in his mind a curious blending of both scenes, a bizarre merger of smiles and dirt in those faces, of calm stares and bloody foreheads.

He looked at the grey crowd, buzzing like a gigantic cloud of dusty feet and hands, coming and going.

Potter raised his voice and the crowd's eyes travelled to him, anxious, hungry for his words; they wanted to hear good news, they wanted encouragement. Harry seemed divided by an invisible sword; he looked at the ground, then he searched for any familiar face in the middle of the multitude of faces turned towards him. He started to talk, words stumbling as they left his mouth.

"Excuse me, there's something I want to make clear about Severus Snape, who died a few hours ago," some stopped their actions to focus all their attention on him, intrigued, without understanding what could be said about that traitor. He could make out confusion in some faces; in a lost part of the hall, someone made noises with some vials. "Before dying, professor Snape let me see some of his memories."

He stopped for a moment, watching the gestures of surprise of the wizards and witches, the raised eyebrow of Ron, who had opened his mouth.

"He wasn't who we thought he was. During many years he worked as a spy for the Order; Snape murdered Dumbledore following the instructions he gave him. The director asked him to kill him."

The surrounding noises ceased; every single eye of the castle was opened towards him. So many expressions in so many faces scared him for a second: scepticism, horror, incredulity.

A murmur started around the whole place, wild, agitated.

"Is this a joke?" he heard someone said.

"I promise you I'm not joking," he hurried to tell the crowd, to the hundreds of fixed gazes. A sharp silence was shifting in the hall, dense, big until Harry's voice broke it. His green eyes looked like they were on fire.

"I know many of you won't believe it, but it's true and I'm going to bury him here like the rest, I hope nobody refuses." No one moved as he walked through the crowd, nor as he crossed the threshold. They looked around each other, finding frowns, tight lips, fear in their shiny eyes. Minerva McGonagall went out a few seconds after the young man, followed by Granger and Weasley. The gigantic frame of Hagrid made his way through the multitude, apologizing to the ones he pushed in his hurry to reach the door.

When the last of his steps faded away as he walked, the whispers began in the hall, so many of them that it felt like they came from the walls, blooming from the ground itself. The murmur remained for a long time in the air, like fumes slow to dissolve.

"What the hell was that?" a redhead revolved around; Ron had almost reached him. Hermione chased him too.

"Mr Potter!" McGonagall's voice raised in the air like a small spark. "Mr Potter, please explain what you just said."

Four pairs of eyes were fixed on him.

"I already told you in the Hall: Severus Snape was always in our side and I'm gonna bury him here, with dignity."

The Head of Gryffindor shook her head with force, her tight hair slipping from its hold, running down her temples.

"Listen to me, Mr Potter," she raised her hand to her forehead; her thoughts were like a knot, pounding painfully.

"If anyone wants to come with me, feel free to do it. If you don't agree, I'll do it on my own."

Harry resumed his strides, with Granger walking hurriedly behind him, talking non-stop.

"But Harry, why Dumbledore would ask him something like that?"

The young man's back was facing her, and he answered firmly and drily.

"To save Malfoy, to achieve the absolute trust of…"

Rubeus' eyes couldn't open any more. McGonagall's shoes trumpeted forcefully against the floor; the woman's rigid hands seized Potter's and Granger's shoulder.

"I'll go with you, Mr Potter. Miss Granger, stay here. Hagrid and I will take on from here."

The girl may have thought of refuting, but the blunt, serious voice of the professor dampened her voice in her throat.

The weak sun of the dawn didn't manage to reduce the cold. The heaviness of the battle was jostling in Harry's eyelids, but he tried to keep in his body a firm, energetic pace. McGonagall's steps were like whispers in the grass. The light made its way like a rug of incandescent flowers on the turf, over the Whomping Willow. The day was like any other; if the destroyed castle wasn't visibly at their backs, they could've thought nothing had ever happened. The world's and time's order, the dawn was still the same, no matter how many dead or violence.

He ran under the Willow's branches that lashed through the air and saw Minerva run for the first time, muddling her shoes and raising her skirts with her hands. Hagrid walked clumsily; his enormous frame didn't lend him quickness and a twig had scratched his face.

He didn't even want to think how they would make out alive of that storm of flying branches and rough wind if they had to carry a body. Maybe someone would end up hurt.

The Shrieking Shack seemed to complain when they got inside; wood moaned under their steps, a scent of rotten humidity crouched in corners. The three of them went up the stairs without looking at each other, without speaking. They'd have found hard to bear the hardness of each other's eyes. Soaked in silence, they reached the room where the body laid.

A curtain of light entered shamelessly, strengthening the scene Harry had only perceived the night before. He could see each detail that had gone missing before: the shade almost black of the blood, the sweet and metallic smell it sent off, the stains on the wall, painted like red screams, Snape's limbs, extended and stiff. Rubeus had hidden part of his face between his big hands, Harry could only see his swollen, wet eyes. McGonagall looked around for a few seconds, with a scream stuck in her mouth; her gaze dashed over and over against the body, almost as if she couldn't believe the scene in front of her.

Harry walked slowly through the crimson island, staining his shoes of blood. He had hated Snape, and yet he would've never felt glad by knowing he'd walk on his blood.

The young man knelt over the body without daring to see him fully, as if so much stillness, so much of that red mess, was too much for him. The woman conjured a blanket and a stretcher, overcoming the howl of her inner forces.

Harry focused back on Snape's face, his stagnant and half-closed eyes that wouldn't look at him anymore. Useless, inappropriate compassion conquered his chest. The man's blank face reminded him he had lost something without even knowing, and he regretted every occasion when an encounter with the potion's master ended in a hostile verbal match, when it may have been something different.

Resigning himself, he tried to put the body in the stretcher. Hagrid went to help, but when he touched the body Rubeus let out a surprised wail; his small eyes started to leak over the clothes. Harry found this gesture so sweet for a man so big and rough like Hagrid, who cried in silence as he'd cry for one of his creatures. McGonagall stared at the wall, jaw tight, hardening her expression until making it almost raw; a halo of terrible emptiness shifted over her, but the wet shine of her eyes betrayed her.

"Well," Potter's voice smashed against the silence. "I guess we can go."

Minerva's eyes skidded over the stains of blood on the walls.

"Did he suffer much?" the woman's voice was tight, it almost died out.

Harry looked at her condescendingly, almost with pity.

"I wouldn't say it was painless, but he died quickly enough."

With a swirl of her wand, McGonagall started to vanish the blood from the walls, arm raised and stiff, with the gesture of firm self-control she had always displayed, but her eyes were still wet, betraying the spark of guilt she couldn't extinguish.

The man and the half-giant extended the sheet over the air, but Hagrid's thick fingers didn't help much. The white sheet descended like a vapour, pristine and light, but it was soon stained, red eyes blooming in her, creating a trail of blood. That brown colour soon extended like cancer, tainting everything. Harry felt, for the first time, the uncontrollable urge to cry.

Wasn't suddenly his life like that stained sheet? Like his childhood, dirty of tears and death. He thought of Sirius, of Remus and the inability to recover the whiteness and cover his memories with a white sheet of oblivion.

He squeezed his eyelids, getting rid of the wetness behind them.

"Let's go, Potter," Minerva ordered.

The young man positioned himself in the side where Severus' feet laid, to raise his side of the stretcher.

"Cover his face, please."

Hagrid looked at the fallen soldier's face as if he was watching at an old town. He was having a hard time letting go.

"I don' know, Harry; it's like he was breathin'," he mumbled with swollen and reddened eyes.

"He isn't breathing, Hagrid. It's your imagination," the youth told him, implying he was ready to go.

The semi-giant took the sheet to cover him and extended it with a bit of difficulty, but when it was time to cover the man's face, he stayed still, watching downwards.

"Harry, I know it sounds like… it's just, I think he's breathin'."

McGonagall avoided looking at her companions; she was scared she wouldn't be able to contain herself if she saw Hagrid's expression, and then she'd start to behave as irrationally as him at that moment; he was so agitated he said Snape was still breathing. She heard Potter's patient voice, trying to calm him down.

"No, Hagrid. It's normal you're feeling this way, but you have to calm down…"

Minerva walked to the door; how dark, what a lonely place to die. Snape's death had been just like his life. She rudely destroyed a tear in the corner of her eye.

"To make you feel better, I'll prove you he isn't…"

When would she stop feeling this way? She couldn't see the moment of forgiveness; remorse would be a beast in her memory that'd eat her slowly and from her insides.

Aphonia; not even Potter's voice carried on in that infamous corner.

She turned her head to see what was happening. Hagrid and the youth were watching her, as if they expected something from her. McGonagall had the annoying feeling they'd been sneakily inspecting her for a while.

"What's wrong, Potter?"

The lad's eyes refused to meet hers; his hands moved in the air many times, as if they were lost, like big, blind butterflies. A green spark ignited in his eyes.

"He's breathing."

Something was clouding in her brain, a wall of water between her and Potter. Sudden dizziness forced her to hold on the wall.

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**Author's Note:** Thanks to Gato Azul again for letting me translate this wonderful story; I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. If you want the original story, just send me a PM, because FF is a bitch with links.

Side note: **My first language is not English**, so I apologise in advance for every mistake and odd-wording :) I'll update every Monday, as I have every chapter ready.

Reviews and comments are always appreciated.


	2. The Dormant Dragon

**Disclaimer:** If you recognise it, it's not mine. All credit due to J. K. Rowling and Gato Azul.

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**2\. The Dormant Dragon**

Granger had the suspicion from the beginning, since the moment she saw Potter crossing the door alone, when she looked at his green and sharp eyes searching for something in the Great Hall, frantically and anxiously. It seemed something unexpected had happened. Even weirder was the fact that Harry had dragged Poppy Pomfrey with him with the same flurry he had arrived with, without telling anything to anyone.

She waited restlessly for the boy's return and the three elders, but hours passed with no change. She speculated many theories: maybe one of them had gotten hurt when they passed under the Whomping Willow; it wasn't easy to carry a body and avoid the branches, after all. Maybe McGonagall, who wasn't so young anymore, and she had fallen; that'd explain Harry's hurry, but she had noticed in his face an ambiguous expression of hope and emotion, it somehow didn't fit. Maybe she had misunderstood his face, maybe he was just really nervous, but she had known him for so long…

Tired of the uncertainty, Granger and Weasley walked to the Shrieking Shack; if someone was hurt, surely they could help. Along the way Hermione had been thinking about Potter's expression, imagining the possibility he'd found some survivors, some injured student or wizard that could've stayed behind.

The redhead pulled her arm while they ran under the Willow as if they were one. He was dragging her with him, pushing her around until they walked through the danger and entered the house. So much physical contact with Weasley had made her blush. She watched him under the dim light with a half-smile.

"Let's go upstairs," the boy told her with a kind thread in his words. They heard from the stairs women's voices, low and muffled. When they reached the last step Harry's voice was clear in their ears.

They walked in silence, barely supporting themselves on the floor's moaning wood, following the noises until they reached an open door.

"… injured students for me to stay here, I am not going to leave them to attend a… this man; I have done enough."

The people in the room turned their heads to the youngsters standing in the threshold, surprised in the middle of a tense and awkward conversation.

"We thought someone was hurt," Weasley hurried to say, wishing he could erase those upset, threatening expressions.

The nurse started to talk again, raising her briefcase from the floor with one hand, without noticing the newcomers.

"I won't say anything to anyone, but you'll have to take care of this," she withdrew quickly without giving them a chance to protest, lightly pushing Weasley with her shoulder, making way. A few seconds later the sounds of her footsteps faded away stairs down.

"What's going on?"

The three wizards looked at each other, giving the impression of talking only with their eyes. Then Hagrid stepped aside; when he moved his gigantic body, he left to their view a man in a stretcher, covered in black clothes and pieces of a sheet. At the beginning they couldn't recognize him, they just stared at the lying frame. They had to think about it for a few seconds.

"Snape?" Weasley spat with a dose of healthy scepticism.

"What's going on?" the brunette asked, as if she hadn't done so a first time already.

"He's alive," Harry let the words fall, like pieces of heavy iron.

"What?"

"We saw him die!"

Potter looked at the lying wizard with seriousness, his breath dying out by a pitiful stab.

"He survived. I've no idea how, but he did it."

He was surprised Snape hung onto life like that. The young Gryffindor looked at the covered, bloody body.

"And what are we going to do with him?" Granger asked.

"Madam Pomfrey gave him first aids, but she won't help him anymore. We'll hide him here, for now; it's not safe to take him to the castle. Someone will have to stay here, to take care of him."

The five of them stared at each other.

"Is it true he was on our side?"

Hagrid and McGonagall turned their heads towards Harry, expectant. The youth nodded without looking back. It wasn't easy for anyone to believe something as big as that with only words, not even if those words came from Harry Potter. Nonetheless, his aura of seriousness didn't allow them to be incredulous either.

The wizard's silence was hazy and wide; their eyes were somewhere in between the dim light which flew from some unknown point, a clear, stormy ray of light.

"Who is gonna stay?" Weasley dared to ask, overwhelmed by the silent environment. Their stares turned even more awkward.

"I… sometimes I take care of injured animals," Rubeus cut in, voice rough, then he seemed to regret it and added, "Not like I know much, or that Severus', I didn' mean…"

"It's alright, we got what you meant, but it's for the best you return to the castle, you can help Poppy," McGonagall told him, whose eyes didn't stray from Snape, keeping them focused on him. "I'll stay," she added with a resolution that had something terrible and suspicious about it.

Harry thought about protesting, but the woman's rigid face raised in challenge.

"I have to stay, Severus and I…" she didn't seem to know how to end the sentence, and it wasn't necessary. 'Severus and I' was enough: their fight in the middle of the hall, the intrigues, the mistrust, the infinite web of doubts between them was enough argument, and everyone in Hogwarts knew it.

"I'll stay with you, professor," Hermione offered almost immediately, disturbed by the touching solemnity of her teacher, who seemed older and harder than ever. The woman looked at her for the first time during that conversation.

"Thank you, Miss Granger," her brief smile seemed sad and forced.

Ronald grimaced with incredulity and distaste; she returned the gesture, watching him with disapproval.

"Don't say anything, Ronald," she whispered, without the professor hearing her. "Someone has to help her."

"I'll stay too."

"No way, Mr Potter. There are many things you have to do, may things to clean, if you know what I mean."

Harry had the impression the professor didn't want much company, and, given the situation, he decided not to insist, despite the strong feeling he had that it was his responsibility to take care of that man; after all, Snape was in that state because of him, because of him and Lily. He looked at the bundle of stained clothes for a few more moments. He didn't know what to feel, pity or guilt; he only felt the sensation of a cloak of silence spreading inside him, a mere quiet watcher.

He was surprised he never suspected the real face of the "traitor"; maybe he had been too conceited, or he had been too focused on hating him. He couldn't change what had happened between them; he was sure about only one thing about Snape's situation: he had to get him out of the predicament he was in, he had to get him out and made sure he lived.

* * *

Before he left, Potter stopped just outside the room. Ron and Hagrid had already left and Hermione was waiting for him in the ground floor: she'd do a trip to the castle, looking for potions and healing materials, after that she'd return to the Shrieking Shack.

Minerva stood by his side, as if she had expected that the young man would ask her a question, or as if she wanted to fill him with them. There was something unsaid between the two that was floating around.

"Do you believe me?" the boy began. "Do you think Snape is innocent?"

He didn't like that secretive air the professor's attitude radiated.

"I'm not sure what to believe, Mr Potter, but you don't have to worry about my intentions," she said, showing a wariness worthy of a Head of House. "My only goal is to find out the truth, and I won't manage it if Severus dies."

Harry looked at her intently, absorbed by her rigid, neutral stance, by the honest resolve of her face that seemed to harden over years and experiences. Then Potter nodded and left, now calmer.

* * *

Hermione had shrunken the potion's vials and the few guides of Mediwizardy she had managed to pull out of the rubble. After that, she went back to Hogwarts' grounds, pockets full.

She ran under the Whomping Willow, avoiding its lashings, his brutal whippings of branches and twigs.

She entered the house, creating a ruckus by stepping without caring on the old, telling wood that screeched under her weight.

In the room McGonagall waited, crouched by the stretcher, covered by an aura of silence and piety, looking at the dying man's face as if she wanted to unravel the spy's mysteries by sheer force of scanning his pale countenance.

"Professor…" Granger kneeled too, emptying her loot in front of the woman and engorging it to its natural size.

Coagulants, sanitizers, gauzes, pieces of cotton, auxiliaries to produce blood, strong antidotes… anything she could find.

"We best start as soon as possible, Miss Granger. He won't hold on for long."

Hermione would remember that afternoon like an uncertain come and go, a flight of vials, a collection of bloodstains on everything she touched, McGonagall's face constantly reflected on her eyelids. Snape's choked breathing, his wheezing and that awful convulsion he had at midnight, which had them waking up in horror.

For a second, Hermione, still in the threshold of sleep and vigil, thought she was in Malfoy's Manor, waiting to be tortured. Snape had reminded her of that.

She couldn't go back to sleep after the man's seizure, so she stayed awake skipping through that potion's guide. McGonagall stayed up with her, also reading carefully, looking and memorizing anything that could be useful.

Hermione was absolutely disconcerted. In some of those books she had read about poisons and its antidotes, and it was mentioned in a few lines the venom that big snakes produced, and according to the text it was extremely lethal and quick, practically unavoidable unless it was countered in the act by a powerful antidote. And yet Snape had survived for hours without any kind of attention. It didn't sound possible, but there he was, defying logic and laws of life, like a prodigy in endurance. The young woman couldn't find anything to assign this great luck; after all, nobody knew what a dark wizard could hide under his sleeve. She talked about that with McGonagall for a while, but neither of them could find any explanation.

* * *

To wake up in the Shrieking Shack…

Hermione cleaned the dirty bandages in a basin; there weren't many given how many had been injured, so they had to reuse them. And there she was, kneeled like a wagtail peasant, washing and conjuring spells to wash the stains away.

Meanwhile, McGonagall was wheezing, hands coated with jelly-like salves potions and crimson trails, cleaning her forehead with her arm and starting all over again. Sometimes she got nervous, feeling the maimed skin and bloody slits under her fingers.

"This is…" she raised her arms nervously, showing her hands. The brunette could see her palms stained red, full of thick blood, trailing down her fingers.

Hermione turned to her, a bit shaken, while she cleaned the bandages.

"The professor has always been strong; he'll survive," she didn't know if that particular fact calmed or scared her. Snape, after all, had taken Dumbledore away from them, and Hermione feared what he could do if he recovered.

After working all day both sat in front of him. Minerva pulled some rebellious hairs falling on her face back in her bun. Hermione looked at the big, silent, dark room with peaceful melancholy, which was empty of furniture except for that stretcher; from some corner light got in, a lunar veil that floated away in the room and swamped everything: her, McGonagall, Snape's sleeping face.

Both laid on the stone floor, Minerva closer to the wounded man, to watch him during the night and help him if he had a seizure again.

"What do you think about Severus, Miss Granger?"

Hermione shifted her head, awkward, speaking in a quiet voice.

"The professor has done very… bad things," Minerva looked chagrined at the man's face. "But Harry says he's innocent," she shrugged, implying she didn't know what to think.

They went to sleep in silence, although Hermione knew McGonagall wasn't going to close one eye that night. Her back was facing her and she was still as if she was sleeping, but the youth felt her open eyelids, her eyes fixed on Snape's face.

* * *

How long were those days for Hermione, reading and rereading the guide's pages; she had almost learned every instruction they held. And yet, she hadn't even touched Snape, just washed the bandages and diluted the antidote's dosage according to necessity. McGonagall actually did all the practical work. The young Gryffindor had much time to think. With her hands deep in reddish water like that in the basin, she thought about the man's prodigious ability to survive. Why? Of all the dead, why did he survive? Why not Remus or Tonks? Why Snape, of all people? Snape of the many faces, the murderer, the traitor. Harry couldn't erase all of the man's actions with some sentences; Hermione simply couldn't imagine what might redeem him from what he had done, and she also felt fear when she watched that fixed, pale face, each day paler… She believed in Snape for a long time, even when Harry and Ron didn't anymore. Her disappointment had been raw and overwhelming. She could never find an explanation and, in the end, just like everyone else, she convinced herself this man was a Death Eater, maybe the most dangerous one because he had fooled them all for years.

Snape, the dormant snake, the hidden cutting edge, the imminent dagger.

"Miss Granger," McGonagall's voice went through walls of silence, shaken, vibrant. "Miss Granger, please, help me."

The young woman turned hurriedly towards Minerva, who held with a hand the lifeless head of the half-blood. She closed the distance quickly, and her hands trembled when she felt the professor putting the man's skull on hers.

"Hold him and put pressure on the wound."

Her nervous fingers travelled to the crimson spot in the bandages, put pressure and Hermione realized he was barely bleeding. Everything seemed so weird: his resistance to poison, the haemorrhage's spontaneous halt; it didn't seem possible.

Snape's hair exuded a smell of blood and dirt, and he was warm and trembling by the fever. His nose seemed even bigger than normal, his skin wet and shallow.

Hermione experienced an unpleasant mix of pity and revulsion. McGonagall came back with a vial and emptied it in the lips of the Occlumens; a part of the fluid slid down from the fixed corner of his mouth. Minerva's face was squeezed in a rigid expression of focus, her eyebrows were drawn together, and her aged hands trembled slightly.

Brown eyes slid down the thick air, travelling down the woman's hair, over her drawn mouth, looking at the jelly liquid inside the vial that travelled lazily to the helpless, half-opened lips of the man.

Snape's closed eyes, his forehead wet with sweat, his jaded and faltering breathing.

Hermione's eyes descended: the eyes, the colossal nose, the unprotected eyes, the liquid falling over, the beginning of the pale neck, thin skin and shallow of colour, the prominent Adam's Apple, blood, the stained bandages, the ripped suit, chest, black and black, his cloak's waves, the fabric's complex turns. His pupil's movement stopped in-between the delicate folds and found a bright, soft feather; she extended her fingers to take it slowly, like an ethereal relic.

"Miss Granger, that…" Minerva had raised her eyes and lowered the vial.

"A feather from Fawkes?"

"I thought he had run away…" the woman's whisper faded away like smoke, her glassy regard directed to the unusual shine of the feather in the middle of the gloomy Shrieking Shack.

Hermione could only stare stunned at the same point where McGonagall's gaze got lost. Somehow, to watch that feather was to watch Albus Dumbledore's face, like feeling the shape of his spirit spreading all over the room, covering Snape, saving him, because it was now obvious that the Potion Master couldn't have survived without the phoenix.

She didn't know the reasons why Dumbledore would've wanted to save Snape; she didn't even imagine how he could have known he would have the opportunity to save him.

"Albus…" Minerva's words caused the blue memory of the old man's gaze to lighten up even more.

"Why?" the young woman asked, as if she was speaking to the feather itself. When her gaze trailed back to the professor's they were wet, with the constant leaking of her eyes that fell fateful on the man.

"For Merlin's sake, what Potter says… what Potter says, it's true?"

Hermione gazed back to Snape's silent face and couldn't find anything but the asphyxiating silence of his condition as a dying man. Maybe Nagini's dark magic and its poison were so powerful, not even Fawkes' tears could achieve more than stopping the haemorrhage and conquering death.

But the wounds didn't close.

"Professor Dumbledore saved him," Hermione repeated to herself, thinking about Harry's words, in his gravely, fixed face. A horrible knot closed her throat, a strong blow in her stomach… suddenly there were appearing bright spots of light in front of him, born inside her own eyes.

"Then… Snape? Snape?"

And she could talk no more.


	3. Phoenix's Feathers

**Disclaimer:** All this belongs to Rowling and Gato Azul.

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**3\. Phoenix's feathers**

They heard footsteps downstairs, the house's telling wood announcing that more than one person was going inside. Hermione positioned herself in a hidden angle and pointed firmly to the door. McGonagall held Snape's head with one hand and her wand with the other.

From the dim light of the hall Potter' and Weasley's faces appeared slowly, crossing the darkness.

Harry saw Hermione cross the room, coming from some hidden corner towards them. McGonagall let out a breath she seemed to have been holding up.

"Mr Potter," she greeted them, slightly nodding in one of her rigid gestures of cordiality.

"Good afternoon, professor," his attention focused on the livid figure cradled in the woman's arms. "How is the professor?"

"He seems to be getting better," McGonagall answered without any excitement.

Ron saw Hermione cleaning bandages in a corner of the room and smiled at her; she returned the gesture and immediately left the basin to hug her friends.

The shiny smiles of the youngster managed to take away from her, for a few minutes, all the pressure she had been carrying for days.

"How had you been? What has happened?" she asked excitedly while caressing Harry's arm in a kind gesture.

"The Minister had started a series of trials against Snape."

Hermione's smile vanished in a second and McGonagall raised her hand to her face.

"I knew it was only a matter of time," the woman said with barely contained anger.

"Well, we're preparing a defence and we wanted you to help us, Hermione."

The Gryffindor girl turned her head towards the professor, not sure if to accept.

"But someone has to stay here to help the professor."

The four of them started to look at each other, with the same question painted in their faces.

Harry was essential for the trial; Hermione would be more useful in the defence than washing bandages…

The gazes of the three fell on Ronald, who took a few moments to understand what that meant; he was already opening his mouth to protest when he noticed the hostile expression of McGonagall and Hermione's disapproval while crossing her arms. Harry smiled at the man's obfuscated expression.

"Me?"

"It isn't hard, Ron," Hermione said. "The professor handles the most delicate aspects."

Five minutes later, the young Weasley watched with tragic eyes as his friends left while he stayed locked with McGonagall, the dying bat and a bunch of bloody bandages waiting to be washed. Minerva walked behind Potter and Grander, stepping over their shadows until the room's threshold.

Harry breathed deeply, watching fixedly the professor's severe eyes.

"Thank you, for what you're doing," his eyes went back and forth restless to the room he just left.

The woman pulled out from her robes the phoenix's feather and gave it to him slowly and silently under Hermione's kind gaze, who followed the movement of her hands and the light in their faces

The boy raised his face, confused, watching the feather and McGonagall's telling eyes alternately.

"It was in Severus's robes."

"Dumbledore," he said, making sense of Snape's survival, sealing in his mind the vague knowledge he had of Albus and the Potion Master's relationship.

And he remembered them both, facing each other, talking quietly while the castle slept.

* * *

Hermione lived the next two days after her departure from the Shrieking Shack tied to Harry. They slept in the same half-destroyed classroom, transfigurating anything into scrolls, writing down any idea they came up with to build his defence. Harry didn't talk much; he stayed sitting beside the window, like watching a picture from his past, deep in very long and very quiet contemplations.

Hermione asked herself many times if he was thinking of Snape or Dumbledore.

Granger hunted Harry in between his silences, trying to make him spit out more details, more clues about the crooked path that was the professor's life, the traitor's, the martyr's. Potter told her many times the precise moment when Dumbledore had asked his servant to kill him, but Hermione could sense a big hole in his story.

Potter always took care of omitting something about his mother; he kept in secret the Potion Master and Lily Evans' whole relationship.

"Let's go back…" the brunette began to talk while tapping her parchment with a quill, with a gesture that helped her think. The woman's expressions reminded Potter vividly of their first year in Hogwarts, the way he saw her study for tests: Granger always walked around with the book in hand, mumbling things, teaching herself the subject. "Professor Snape joined the Death Eaters when he was eighteen…"

Her voice was monotonous, like someone who is reading a report. Harry was thinking about the trial, about all those people in the Ministry, about their haughty way of looking at the accused, in their condemning, distant gazes, and he didn't think they'd understand it: neither Snape nor Lily. He didn't want to give them the knowledge he had been given himself, the thick drops mixed with blood. He didn't want Snape's silence, aged for so many years, to be broken with the whispering of all those people.

Hermione's voice came back in his head.

"… made a deal with him and turned into a double-spy, putting himself in danger again," she raised her eyes towards her friend, dropping the quill and breathing in to start talking like a doctor giving a diagnosis. "Harry, you cannot hope for people to believe he did all of this without a reason, much less to hope that a jury will believe it.

Potter held her gaze, but his mind seemed absorbed in something different from the image in front of him.

"He did," he said, distracted.

"Harry, that's absurd. If Snape…" she took the quill again as if it was a representation of the Potion master, and she put it over the parchment. "If Snape wanted to leave the Death Eater for a reason like that, I don't think he could've found a worse way to do it than turning into a double spy. It doesn't make any sense."

Harry shook his head.

"You don't get it."

"Of course I don't get it, Harry, and the jury won't either."

"Forget Snape's reasons, let's focus on his actions," he looked to the window again, over and over again, watching in the landscape the shape of a willow, the house behind the willow, the stretcher inside the house. "The professor joined the Death Eaters, but he was so convinced of deserting them, he took a risk facing Dumbledore and agree to serve him as a spy—"

"Or maybe Voldemort sent him to pretend," Hermione interrupted him vehemently.

"No, it wasn't like that," sometimes the Prefect didn't understand why Harry was so sure of what he said.

"Harry, that's not an argument," she told him, torn between compassionate and annoyed.

The boy let himself fall on the chair, covering his face with his hands.

"I know, but…" he shifted, without managing to end the sentence.

"Harry," Hermione got close, he could feel her hand rubbing her back with the same kindness that Molly would've used. "There's something you aren't telling me, right?"

His green eyes were raised towards her, glossy, tired.

"What is it, Harry? Why did Snape do what he did?"

"I can't tell you."

The girl withdrew her hand slowly, a bit disappointed.

"How can I help you if you don't tell me?"

"I can't tell anyone, Hermione. You have to trust… the professor had a strong reason, that's all I can say, and I need you to help me because I have to convince the jury with what I have."

He was massaging his nose bridge nervously, shoulders hunching, eyes locked in the chimney's fire. Her compassion for Potter's deflated frame was the only thing that encouraged her to continue this impossible pursuit: to defend a murderer without any proof or coherent arguments.

"Alright, Harry. We'll do everything we can. Maybe even Fawkes' feather could help us."


	4. The Risen Prince

**Disclaimer**: J. K. Rowling and Gato Azul created this. Nothing belongs to me.

* * *

**4\. The Risen Prince**

Hermione looked around. Harry and Ronald had just left the room; the young Weasley's warmth was fading away inside her, like a piece of the hug they had just shared.

She regretted not being able to be with him for a longer time.

She went dutifully to her trench formed by mountains of bandages and started to clean them fiercely, still thinking about the trial, about the arguments they'd give… she watched carefully the bandages she was washing, noticing the stains were much smaller than the last week.

"How has professor Snape been?"

McGonagall was washing the man's forearm with a wet sponge.

"Better. Sometimes he moves."

Granger was pensive; the gauze's water she was squeezing ran down her hands, her bushy hair was lightened up by the sunset's light, which warmed half her face.

"Is something wrong, Miss Granger?"

"We've been having some problems building a good defence. I feel Harry is hiding something from me, and the worst thing is that I don't even know why he's doing it."

McGonagall settled down the man's arm beside his body and extended the sheet, covering him up to his neck.

"You know things about the professor, right? Do you think you could answer me some questions?"

Minerva was watching her with her usual stagnant serenity.

"What questions, Miss Granger?"

"Professor Snape joined the Death Eaters, I guess for the same reasons everyone else did: power and money, right?"

The professor moved her head slightly, without nodding or denying. Hermione turned back to the interrogation.

"Is there something the professor cares for more than those things?"

Minerva looked at the wall, her eyes seemed to wish for a window.

"It's a very hard question, Miss Granger. I've never spoken intimately with Severus. I can only tell you that, when I was his teacher, I didn't even notice he cared about money, although he always seemed to need it; his school robes were always faded and old…" she gave the impression of being talking about times too far away, of a person different from Snape. "The only thing I know Severus liked was Potions, he was brilliant in every subject… like you."

Hermione trembled slightly.

"He was always trying to be the best, he was the best, in almost everything."

"In what wasn't he good, professor?" Hermione's curiosity had increased after the confidence she was included in.

"In Quidditch. He was jealous of Potter; they fought all the time. Generally, Severus was a distant student, but calm; however, when Potter or Black showed up…"

Snape was silent, covered by a mute, stiff veil, as if he was another furniture, completely distant from what was happening around him, distant even from himself and his own story. Hermione couldn't picture a young Snape, a student. She couldn't delete the image of the laying, too pale man.

Pale, pale like a withered flower, like an old, faded relic, like a blurry photo of his past.

That was it; Snape was so lost, his gaze so remote, hidden in the depth of his eyelids, he seemed to never have lived at all.

* * *

She opened one eye; she thought she had heard a noise, but McGonagall slept by her side unruffled, with a stance so rigid as she had when standing up, with her face facing the roof and arms on her sides, arranged almost symmetrically.

The girl half-stood, calculating it was about three in the morning. She looked around, everything seemed to sleep; the basin full of quiet water, the spiderwebs moving almost imperceptible, with movements so fluid, as if they were underwater.

The man's breathing revealed her path, walking uncertainly in the dark until her fingers found a body's warmth, the scratchy sheets. She touched until she found the sweaty, hot forehead. She put in between the lips' gap a bit of medicine to reduce the fever.

The man's weight made her arms yield. Granger was slowly laying him down again, putting down the lifeless head, but suddenly on his eyes a pair of fiery coals were opened, orbs of black fire.

"Professor McGonagall, professor," she whispered, having turned her gaze away from the painfully aware eyes. "Professor McGonagall," she repeated in vain.

She could feel the gasping breathing of the man in her arms, sensing the weak shift of his muscles, but she didn't dare to look at him in the face and tell him… What could she tell someone like Snape, after all?

McGonagall woke up suddenly, scared and confused.

"What, Miss Granger? What happened?" she mumbled in the dark, rubbing her eyes delicately.

"Professor Snape is awake," the brunette whispered.

The professor went in a second from rattled drowsiness to absolute wakefulness. She stood up almost jumping and walked to the man, kneeling beside him.

"Severus, Severus."

The black eyes were wandering, without stopping on anything in particular.

"Severus, can you hear me?"

Then finally the man's gaze locked on her. McGonagall's face was hardened and sour, looking in the depths of the dark pupils in a frantic search.

Hermione looked from the woman to the man alternatively.

The half-blood's lips drew syllables, but none of them emitted any sound; they could barely hear a dry, abrupt exhalation. The women looked at each other confused, then focused their attention back to the man, who was trying to say something again, without result. Then his black eyes were ablaze, and he shifted with desperation, opening his lips over and over again like he was yelling, but nothing came from him other than alarming aphonia.

"Calm down, it's natural your voice doesn't work because of the snake's bite, don't get frustrated if you can't talk, you're an Occlumens."

Snape calmed down; his wheezing was the only thing that could be heard in the room.

_Who…? Minerva? What's happening? Where's Nagini?_

"She's gone, Severus. War's over," his black eyes moved nervously on her face, stunned, delirious.

_No, it isn't over, Potter… the blood, so much blood._

Snape lowered his lids, livid, grimacing. His pain turned out to be sharp when one watched the expression of his face.

Minerva reached with her hands, but she never touched him; she just watched him, thinking about something very far away from the physical pain the man may have been feeling.

"Why did you kill Albus?"

And her voice was blunt, charging against the silent space, taking down the ambience around her. Granger seemed shocked by such a direct question.

A fixed stare of jet black pierced her.

_Kill me if revenge is what you want, Minerva._

"I want to know why you did it, Severus," she said, vibrating of rage and drowned accusations.

_Where's Potter? Where's the Dark Lord? What's going on?_

"Answer me, Severus."

The half-blood's gaze rose until it found Granger's face, with her big eyes widened and her hair hanging all over in spiral curls. The young woman wasn't speaking, she just looked at him as if he was the specimen of a strange, dangerous creature she had never seen before.

_I had to do it and I did it._

Minerva's mouth curled with a tremble; her rigid fingers broke the distance between the man and herself and she rudely put the potion's vial for pain. Hermione rose a hand, wanting to stop her, but finally lowered it again in impotence. The half-blood coughed, choking, but Minerva didn't show signs of commiseration.

"Do you know why are you alive? Do you know who you own for having kept your life, you coward?" she rubbed it with rushed, aggressive sentences.

_You? The infinite benevolence of Potter?_

"To Albus, I don't know how. He sent you Fawkes, despite what you did to him; he wanted to help you and it's so easy for you to say you killed him because you had to," she slowly lowered her face to the man's, without breaking the eye contact. "Severus, if you ever cared about me or Albus, tell me why. Why, Severus?

_Think whatever you want, Minerva._

The woman would've slapped him if he hadn't been in those conditions.

"We should've let you die, Severus," she spat before rising and leaving the room. In her insides she had been expecting it, she had strengthened her hope of Albus giving him those awful orders, she hoped deep inside he wasn't a traitor; when she looked at the feather she was almost convinced of his innocence, and yet there she was, holding herself against the stair's railway, with an almost uncontrollable urge to cry out in rage and disappointment.

* * *

Granger put him in the stretcher carefully, without watching him again, reject implicit in her elusive eyes, and with the same disapproving mutism she went back to a corner of the room to kneel and scrub more dirty clothes beside a basin.

Snape tried to breathe and bear the pain without yelling or moaning. He concentrated on the sounds the girl made when she washed; he imagined the water drops and recited to himself an old monologue to avoid thinking about the burning or the tortuous sensation gnawing his neck. The pain started to slowly fade away, the noises around him decreasing by the lethargy and fatigue that were beginning to take over.

A feminine voice, soft and bitter travelled to him, in the middle of his drowsiness.

"Harry thinks you're innocent. I hope he isn't wrong."

* * *

McGonagall spent day and night kneeled beside him, showing her irritation by her austerity of words. Snape hadn't woken up again and she spent time trying to lower his fever with potions and wet rags; she gave him water and tried to feed him, washed his body with wet gauzes, doing everything without much tact, face darkened and hard… Hermione helped where she could, wondering at every action if they were helping an enemy.

Harry and Ronald had spent a big chunk of their time in the Ministry and Hogwarts, helping to repair the castle and repeating the story of their Horrocrux's hunt over and over again.

With the coming and going of the days, the habitants of the castles started to ask them about what happened to Snape; nobody had seen his burial, not even his body, and McGonagall' and Granger's absence were too obvious.

Finally, Potter had to confess the man had survived and they were taking care of him, but he didn't agree on giving his whereabouts, no matter how much they asked or stalked him for information. He had to protect the Occlumens form the dubious people of the Ministry and the magical community's rage in general, although he knew he wouldn't be able to keep him safe for much longer if they didn't move him away from the Shrieking Shack.

* * *

Hermione arrived at Hogwarts trying to go unnoticed; she had to look for some healing potions and go back quickly to the Shrieking Shack. The Great Hall's roof and walls were rebuilt; people slept there, laying on the floor as if they were camping or resting in a war shelter. She walked between the lumps, with light and silent footsteps. Having gone at night had been a good idea to avoid getting surprised by a sea of questions. Harry had warned her they had to keep Snape's location in secret as much as they could.

Harry and Ron went through her mind like two melancholic comets. She didn't know where they were at the moment, maybe sleeping at some muggle motel close to the Ministry.

She found a table with healing stuff and started to look for the vials, putting away everything useful in her never-ending bag. Bandages, gauzes and many doses of coagulant potions. In her hurry to finish, a small vial fell from her fingers, breaking against the floor. Hermione looked around; some people shifted in their nest of sheets and comforters.

A blue eye was focused on her in the middle of the harmonious breathings and dim light of the hall.

"Hermione?"

"Neville," she whispered a bit scared, keeping her voice low.

"What are you doing?"

"I can't talk, I have to go, Neville, I'll tell you…"

Several pairs of eyes looked at her with curiosity.

"Aren't you Potter's friend?"

She closed her bag and started to hop between the laying people.

"Hermione, wait!"

But the girl didn't stop; in her quick escape, she stepped over some feet and hands.

She heard rushed footsteps behind her and wished that Harry could've thought of lending her his Cloak of Invisibility. She didn't know how much ruckus she had caused, but it was clear her visit to Hogwarts wasn't going to be a secret.

She ran as fast as she could until she got out of the castle and there she looked around. No one was following her. She made her way back to the Shrieking Shack.

* * *

Harry entered slowly, followed by the redhead, looking around with solemn, sad seriousness, walking silently, stepping lightly to avoid making any noise. McGonagall greeted him with an inclination of her head, Hermione gave him a quiet but strong hug. Both of them looked worn, like invaded by the smell of confinement and sterility of the room. The professor took him to the stretcher, where both of them kneeled. Then Minerva started to murmur.

"He can't talk; I think the bite destroyed his vocal cords. I don't know if his voice is going to come back, you'll have to communicate by Occlumency."

Harry nodded, eyes on the man's gaunt face.

McGonagall pushed him by the shoulder until he woke up. His black eyes opened on Minerva's face, shifting to the boys with excruciating slowness.

Harry shifted positions, again and again, feeling nervous.

"Professor," he inclined his head forward, letting his gaze lock in an awkward and overwhelming contact with the injured one.

Far away, Granger and Weasley's voices whispered something about a jury.

His black eyes were fixed on him, blank.

_Who are you?_

"I'm Harry Potter, sir."

_Potter._

The boy blinked several times, not knowing what to say, having been thinking about that moment, planning every detail of what he was going to say, and now that he was there the words had left his mind. He could only focus on his half-opened eyes, consumed by pallor.

"Professor, I'm sorry about what happened between us."

Snape remained impassive, like a wax statue. Harry held his gaze again.

"If I had known…" he stopped to correct himself. "I want to thank you for everything. I was rude many times, if I had known you, I mean…" he seemed unable to string a single thought. "If I had known, what you really did, things would've been different. I… I just wanted to say that I'm grateful and that we're going to protect you from the Ministry or from whoever is necessary.

The man looked at him for a few more seconds, without giving any hint of wanting to answer, and then he closed his eyes again with indifference, leaving Potter confused and frustrated, asking himself what just happened.

He turned towards McGonagall looking for an explanation, but she turned her head away, upset.

* * *

Harry's voice expanded in the jury's hall, the same shapes in the air formed by the sound of his words, his clear shade flowing soft and gentle through ears.

He was already a man.

The people of the jury: a mass of faces and hands, frowns and whispers. They heard him, they stuck whispers in their ears, some made ugly faces after Harry's every sentence, others nodded, complying with his speech.

"That is why I think this trial is unnecessary and, why not say it? Disrespectful towards professor Snape and everyone who knows him. The proofs of his innocence are undeniable; it doesn't make any sense to be here," the murmur in the tiers increased. The new minister looked around, scared of the people's zeal; one of his advisors took the floor.

"Have you considered, young Potter, the possibility of his memories being fabricated by Severus Snape to cover himself? It is well known that he's an Occlumens; it wouldn't be hard for him, don't you think?

The young man looked at the other's eyes, with intense disapproval, a shadow behind the green of his pupils.

"Yes, we thought about it, but we've known professor Snape since we were children and we'd keep an eye on him since then; the dates, events and the professor's attitudes during all these time match the memories he gave me," his face was hardened by the raw light of the place. "I believe in the innocence of Severus Snape."

The advisor smiled to himself, ironic.

"If my memory doesn't fail me, young Potter, you're the only know who has seen these alleged memories; therefore, I don't think they've been analysed as they should. It's a rather weak defence; surely you don't expect us to declare this man innocent just because of your hunches; because facts, young Potter, those are undeniable. There are witnesses, included yourself, that saw Albus Dumbledore being murdered by Severus Snape.

Hermione watched Harry's hand: clutched into a fist, impotent.

The girl stood up, watching around as a multitude of eyes focused on her. The words got stuck in a knot, but she swallowed and began to talk; at the beginning, her voice sounded weak, like a trail of liquid flowing through the hall.

"There are still Death Eaters around who are proven to be guilty, and instead of going and hunt them we're here, uselessly talking about an innocent man. Why are you only concerned about charging Severus Snape? What about the others? Is he the only guilty one for you?"

Potter seemed to recover clarity and supported Hermione.

"While you all hid and did everything to deny Voldemort's return, professor Snape went out there to those madmen," he moved his hands firmly, face transfixed, ire behind his voice. "He left his life on their hands just to save us all, and what about you? What have you all done? We don't even know how have you reached your seats."

"Mr Potter," the registrar cut out his monologue. "You are making very serious accusations out of place in the trial of Severus Snape. That is what we came here for, isn't it, Mr Potter?"

"There's another proof," the girl interrupted, trying to soften the volcano that was Harry. "Between Snape's robes we found a phoenix's feather, from Albus Dumbledore's phoenix itself; for some reason, Albus Dumbledore wanted to make sure he saved the professor. What better proof—?"

Again, the haughty voice of the registrar dissolved the girl's voice.

"That doesn't count as evidence unless you can prove that feather is indeed from Albus Dumbledore's phoenix. Can you, Miss?" he crossed his fingers under his chin.

"At this moment, no, sir," a sheepish Granger replied. There was silence in the room.

* * *

During the trip back to the castle, Potter's mouth remained closed; his cloudy eyes couldn't mean anything good. She understood him, that taste of unfairness they drank every day, that outrage. Finally, the young man wondered if his fight had really finished.

They went back to Hogwarts tasting defeat and disenchantment. They had thought it'd be easier; Harry couldn't resign himself to this: trial after trial, tons of witnesses. The memories he had received from Snape were so blunt and undeniable to him… and even if he hadn't wanted to show them to avoid exposing the man, he had begun to understand it'd be necessary to share, at the very least, the most important parts.

They found at the entrance of the castle a group of people: young ex-students from Hogwarts and adults talking loudly; when they saw the two Gryffindor, they went silent, following them with their gaze.

"He's a bastard, a murderous traitor, and he must go to Azkaban," said one of the elders; a general murmur broke after his words. Harry glared at him with his green stare.

"If you want to take him, you'll have to fight me first."

Then the man got cold feet, closing his lips tightly. To attack the boy who lived was a terrible idea, especially after he had just defeated Voldemort.

"Anyone who has any business with Snape will have to face me first."

One by one they started to leave, talking between themselves, watching him with mistrust and confusion. Nobody could understand why Harry Potter was defending Dumbledore's murderer.

* * *

**Fun fact:** It took me several chapters before I realised that every disclaimer at the top was in Spanish. That's one piece of evidence of my idiocy :)


	5. The Court Chamber

**Disclaimer**: All credits to Rowling and Gato Azul.

* * *

**5\. The Court Chamber**

Harry knelt beside the stretcher; black eyes chased him, without too much interest, as one may chase the flight of an insect.

"Good afternoon, professor."

A bored blink of eyes, nothing more than that.

"You look like you're getting better," he improvised, lying a bit; Snape had actually lost a lot of weight, he was emaciated, his cheeks looked dry and sunken, his eyes giving the impression of being bigger. The colour of his face had shifted from a peculiar white to an impoverished yellow, and the bags under his eyes had conquered big chunks of skin around the sockets.

"Professor... I've talked about this with you before, the other day, but I'm not that sure you heard me. I need you to know, I'm really grateful," after having the time to think, Harry had managed to overcome his fear and tell the man exactly what he had to say. He boldly took one of the bony hands between his, as if it was Dumbledore's hand or that of an old friend. Snape looked at the intertwined fingers with disgust and contempt. Harry shrank back for a few seconds when he noticed the disdain the deadman's face was sending him. "Thank you. I'm sorry for everything that has happened between us or between you and my father, I… I'd like to apologize in behalf of him and Sirius, they judged you wrong, I did too and I'm sorry."

The half-blood's eyes were empty, a terrifying puppet. Snape didn't seem to be listening to him, he was paying attention to him as one paid attention to a dog's barks.

"Professor…" the boy insisted. "Say something."

_Don't be an imbecile, Potter. You know damn well I can't talk. Why did you come here? Nothing of what I did was for you._

Harry swallowed, rebuking himself for choosing that word: "say". And he was starting to feel raw disillusion from that black stare that followed him, bleeding with hate, with tremendous and aggressive hate.

He left that room with big steps. He didn't know where that stupid belief had come from, that after everything that had happened, his relationship with Snape could dramatically improve, that by kneeling beside his stretcher, the Potion Master would have given him that kind, agonizing stare when he thought himself dead. For a second, he had even thought it'd be just like with Sirius and that Snape could be for him some kind of godfather, but all those ridiculous ideas had just evaporated.

Snape hadn't changed. Bitten or not, hero or not, he'd never be a man easy to like or even tolerate. Despite this, Harry wanted to go forward with his defence.

* * *

The duties of the director of Hogwarts had started to claim McGonagall. She couldn't keep herself there, in the Shrieking Shack. The press looked for her, the pupils and professors asked for her, they needed her to get the school running. But Snape needed her too and she felt guilty for leaving Miss Granger in charge of taking care of him. To reassure herself, she told herself she'd look for someone she could send to help her. Granger's big eyes appeared in front of her over and over again, those big eyes that looked almost in fear as the door closed behind McGonagall, leaving her alone and locked away with this man.

"I'll find someone soon, Miss Granger. It won't be for long."

But she hadn't been able to calm even herself with that promise. Many details worried her, the trips organized to find Snape, the inability to find a safe place to hide him, the trials, her own doubts and resentment whose target was that same man.

The idea of sending someone to help Granger was a double-edged sword: as more people visited the Shrieking Shack, the easier it would be to find the hiding place where they had him in. McGonagall knew very well they were going to find Snape; it couldn't be delayed for long. The Occlumens' only hope was for Potter to win those trials.

To be charged with managing Hogwarts couldn't be considered under any light as easy.

* * *

She opened her eyes in the middle of the night; something had woken her up. She couldn't help being afraid, alone in the dawn. She crawled in the dark, guiding herself by the breathing's sound, and sparked a _Lumos_ in the tip of her wand when she reached the stretcher.

Snape's chest rose and lowered quickly, too quickly. He was sweating too much and panting. Hermione ran to a table to look for the fever potions and came back. Then, slowly, started to lift the man's head; it was hot, she didn't remember having ever felt a temperature so high in a person. Snape moaned, opening his eyes.

"I'm going to give you medicine."

The Occlumens gritted his teeth, without letting her pass the liquid through his mouth.

"Professor Snape, please," she snorted while trying to open his mouth by force. How much she wished to call McGonagall; it was unbearable to be locked up for days without seeing anyone but him, who slept for most of the time and only woke up to annoy her.

"Open your mouth," she said, trying to loosen his jaw, but in the struggle, she accidentally scratched his neck. The man shifted in her lap, squeezing his eyes and growling.

"I didn't want to hurt you," she apologized while putting the spoon in his mouth and forcing him to swallow the liquid. "Don't be so stubborn, I'm just trying to help you," she chided him while lowering him back on the stretcher.

Snape watched her with just one eye opened, showing some resentment.

_Where's Minerva?_

"The professor had to leave, she's the new Director of Hogwarts and has many things to do."

The Potion Master's gaze seemed to embitter even more.

_Ah, of course._

Then he shut his eyes, pretending to be asleep.

* * *

Hermione squeezed the sweater's fabric, not knowing how to proceed. There were a series of things she wasn't comfortable taking care of; Snape needed a bath and had to 'relieve himself'. He wasn't capable of even lifting his head, much less managing any of those activities by himself, but she didn't feel completely capable of taking care of him.

Thanks Merlin McGonagall had transfigurated some furniture and rubble into a bathroom, but the problem was to get him there.

The man was stubbornly trying to sit; Hermione could see the veins popping in his face and his whole body trembled, his belly and legs shaking in his effort to stand up. His destroyed muscles didn't seem to have any strength left.

"Don't move," she managed to say while holding him in her arms. She disliked feeling his faltering breath on her face. She didn't like him enough to tolerate so much closeness, which would have been even nice if one was talking about Remus or McGonagall, but not him.

She put the man's weight on her back, rising him slowly, almost dragging him. He turned out to be much lighter than she'd thought; given his height, she believed it'd be much harder to carry him around, but of course it was complicated and awkward. Snape's pointed ribs stuck into her back, she heard him wheeze in her ear, moaning quietly, while she stumbled trying to reach the bathroom, getting more and more anguishing because she realized the man's arms were slipping away, he'd fall at any sudden movement.

"Ah, for Merlin!" he was falling sideways; Snape's hand was grasping her shoulder, almost burying his nails, with evident fear of falling over.

"Gran—" it was the first time he'd managed to articulate a syllable; it was like a squawk.

"Don't worry, don't move," she said quickly, focusing on keeping the Potion Master's precarious balance. But, in a desperate reflex, the man moved the other arm and slipped from Hermione's grasp, letting out in his fall a chortled cry. But the young woman never heard the impact of the professor against the floor.

"I see I've arrived at a good moment."

That voice was so familiar, she turned immediately to find Luna's absent and kind face. Snape was half-sitting, supporting his back against Luna, who held him by the arms.

"Luna!"

"Professor McGonagall said you'll be needing an assistant."

The Potion Master was looking at her, unable to move, with an expression of deep annoyance.

"Hello, Professor Snape," she greeted him calmly as if she was talking to Neville or a child, getting so close to his face it seemed she was going to kiss him.

_What are you doing, Lovegood? Help me stand up or leave me on the floor._

"Oh, of course, professor," she said unconcernedly while pulling him upwards, noting the weakness of his limp arms. He had turned out to be, for her, strangely light, just like Hermione had noticed.

"You've lost a lot of weight, professor," she commented casually. Hermione reached to hold his other side, and between the two of them they managed to lift him completely.

They reached the bathroom. Hermione could hardly open the door using her wand. They left him holding himself up against the wall, so he could do what he had to. Both of them were waiting against the closed door. Luna was humming a song and Hermione looked at the roof, impatient.

"Don't you think he has taken too long?"

The blonde shook her head, relaxed and smiling.

"Professor Snape is very lucky, he must have some amazing _Bubstrange_."

Granger looked at her confused, she didn't know there was something in the world known as _Bubstrange_.

"Yeah, sure, wonderful," she said to avoid fighting with Lovegood. The blonde smiled at her in complicity while lightly knocking the door.

"Are you ready, professor Snape?" she asked in a sing-song voice. "Oh, now I remember he can't talk."

They heard a few knocks on the other side of the door. Luna opened it, receiving in her shoulders Snape's hands, looking for something to support himself like a blind man; Hermione immediately got close to hold him too. They had to almost drag him back to the stretcher.

Luna knelt beside him, smiling distractedly. Hermione got close with a basin and sponges, her tense face making a sharp contrast with that of her companion, who smiled as if they were on vacations.

Granger put a wet sponge in her hands.

"I go from his hip up and you from the hip down," Hermione said while hurrying down Snape's sweater, which they had gotten from the infirmary. It was the first time she had seen him dressed in anything other than black, when she thought about it.

"I hope he doesn't have ticklish feet, that can be hilarious but problematic," Luna said. The man felt as if he was in a surrealist movie, with those two insane girls manhandling him, one laughing as if she were in a party and the other frowning, cleaning him with great concentration, like one would clean a dirty cauldron.

Granger had finished quickly and readied herself to change his bandages. She looked at his neck as it if was a long runic text and didn't know where to start. The lunatic was washing his knees, humming lowly, which irritated him quite a lot. Had he had his voice he'd have already yelled at her. He trembled when he felt Lovegood's small hand reach his thigh.

"Don't worry, professor. As much as you need a shower, privacy is important too."

Snape breathed, relieved; he'd have been too embarrassed had they tried to put down his pants, even more embarrassed that he already felt by being watched by two young ladies.

When she finished, Luna stood up, ready to go. Hermione was preparing the bandages they'd put the man and looked at her with big eyes.

"Luna! Where are you going?"

"My class started ten minutes ago."

The brunette's hair looked like a messy mane, in her eyes a shining glare of hysteria.

"No, Luna. Don't leave me."

"Don't worry, I'll come back after the meal. I'll get you and the professor something."

"You said you were going to help me."

"I will, don't worry. The Bubstranges makes everything easier."

"That doesn't exist, Luna! For Merlin's sake!" she yelled at her, wanting to rip her own scalp.

The blonde was watching her so calmly, it only made her angrier.

"You need to calm down, I'll see you in the afternoon," and she went out without minding her partner.

* * *

She had to wait for Luna to come back to dare and change Snape's bandages; it wouldn't have been easy to do it on her own.

The man's eyes chased the feminine hand's movements, fluttering around his neck.

Hermione went around ripping pieces off the bandages, soaked in blood, heavy with the liquid. To feel how that dark, warm fluid slipped on her fingers was starting to get on her nerves. Unlike her, Luna stained her hands without fear or reservation, talking quietly with Snape about those inventions of hers, the _Bubstrangers_.

White skin wax-like, long stretches of weak pallor, open sores of raw skin, red, wet. Marked fangs, extending their path, deepening through the skin, tearing it apart. Snape's neck was almost disfigured; Hermione lost her stoicism when she saw it without bandages covering it. It caused her horror and a bit of disgust. Luna openly cleaned the blood with a wet gauze, touching the injuries, spreading ointment with the same serenity she'd use on normal skin. The man was strongly holding onto the sheets, tightening his jaw, lowering his lids. A few moans went out of his fiercely closed mouth. Then Luna's voice drew whispers in his ear that Hermione couldn't hear.

Granger's hands descended hesitantly onto the Occlumens' neck; she already had the balm in her fingers, spreading it across the red, unprotected skin with tentative caution. Black eyes shone under hers, fixed, sharp.

Snape was looking at her.

He was completely at her mercy, like a captured wild animal, and he was looking at them with the same suspicion and mistrust one of those tamed beasts would show.

At that moment it came to her mind the images of all those times he had mocked her in class, of the many occasions where he had humiliated her, Harry and Ron. It was ironic to find oneself in a situation like this, where he depended on the girl he had been cruel to and despot uncountable times. Nevertheless, Hermione didn't try to hurt him when she applied the balm; she just did it coldly, without showing compassion. She only gave him the mechanic movement of her hands over the wounds, without paying attention to his pained expression and the whimpers he tried to contain with all his might. She told herself that man was paying only a small part for all the evil he had done.

She couldn't bring herself to believe in his innocence. For a long time she was the only one of the trio that held him in some esteem and she refused to believe he was a bad person, given the regard Dumbledore held for him, but when he killed the director in such a cowardly way, she lost any respect she may had felt for him. It was more than losing respect, it was losing faith in people.

Snape was bad; he had proved it and Hermione wasn't budging so easily, she wouldn't make the mistake of trusting him, just like Harry was doing. To believe in that man was lethal, Dumbledore had already gone through that.

She'd be alert to protect Harry. She wasn't to be fooled so easily.

* * *

Luna looked at the roof with her soft, distant smile.

"Do you really think Snape is innocent?" it took Hermione long minutes to dare ask her that, to exteriorize some of the uncertainty that overwhelmed her.

The blonde nodded without looking away from the roof.

"Why?" Granger insisted, with the annoying feeling her partner wasn't paying her any attention.

"He is," Lovegood insisted with firm certainty, still smiling as if she had been asked the simplest question of her life. Hermione couldn't help feeling angry by that simplicity and pig-headedness.

"How do you know he's innocent? You can't just know."

Luna shrugged.

"A traitor doesn't have Professor Snape's expression."

Granger bent a bit, trying to get a better view of her friend's face.

"Did you see his face when professor McGonagall attacked him? That tells me he isn't bad."

Hermione leaned her back against the cold stone wall, remembering those words that had deeply confused her.

_You have your mother's eyes._

What was Snape? Who was he?

* * *

She had been left alone hours ago, reading a book, trying to overcome boredom. The Occlumens was asleep; he was asleep for most of the time, and it was a relief for Hermione; she wouldn't have stand the tense silence stretching for hours and hours.

The twilight barely entered through the windows, a few sketches of dying sun.

Someone knocked the gigantic door, and Hermione knew very well those patient, gradual knocks. She ran to greet Harry and Ron, but found instead a landscape empty of any of her friends, but their heads appeared in the air, their shoulders, their legs. And soon she saw, at the feet of both boys, the Cloak of Invisibility.

She could only find in Harry's face a fake smile.

"I need you to come with me, Herms, today there's a second session of the trial."

The brunette watched him stunned, then frowned, showing how angry she was.

"But the next session was two weeks from now."

"They rescheduled it," said Ron, crossing his arms. Harry nodded.

"It was to be expected from them, they rescheduled it without telling us. I just found out a few hours before, we had to leave now."

Hermione turned her face towards the stretcher.

"And Professor Snape?"

Ron grimaced, armed with previous resignation.

"If there's no one else, I guess I'll have to stay."

Harry and Granger looked at each other, common anguish interlinking their eyes.

* * *

Harry seemed uncomfortable, shifting in his seat repeatedly, unable to find a tolerable position. The room was too cold, Hermione had to cross her arms to compensate for the chillness of the place. The registrar's voice filled the hall, pronouncing firmly his arguments against Snape.

It was Harry's turn; his steps rumbled over the whole place. Granger was nervous, something told her they were going to lose that session; she wasn't even convinced of his innocence, after all, and the registrar's arguments sounded very reasonable to her, they had managed to increase the doubt in her mind.

"We've all misjudged professor Snape, we were wrong. In my first year of Hogwarts I accused him of trying to steal the Philosopher's Stone myself, and that same year Voldemort revealed to me that Snape was trying to protect it, there are witnesses of that willing to declare."

The jury held a contemplative silence.

"During my third year in Hogwarts Snape protected us from a werewolf, the late Remus Lupin. He put himself between us despite being attacked in his youth by that same person. Had he wished for my death, he wouldn't have intervened."

The registrar rubbed his chin with his hand languid and arrogantly.

"Mr Potter, haven't you considered the possibility of Severus Snape protecting you because his master, Lord Voldemort, wanted to kill you himself? Don't you think Voldemort would have punished him for letting you die in the hands of a… werewolf?" he added, distastefully.

Harry didn't know what to say, that was certainly a possibility. Hermione stood up to back up her friend.

"If that was the reason, professor Snape wouldn't have any reason to protect Ronald Weasley and me, and yet he did," Hermione's voice rose. Sometimes Potter swelled with pride when he heard her speak; she had always been an invaluable support for him.

The registrar nodded.

"You'll understand, Miss Granger, that your testimony as a loyal sidekick of Mr Potter isn't completely reliable, without mentioning Severus Snape was risking his façade as a responsible teacher and member of the Order. To let you die would mean to have his stance doubted; after all, nobody has forgotten what he was, that he is…" he remarked with derision and certainty. "a Death Eater. So, Mr Potter, the question is, do you have any actual proof or argument to defend him?"

Harry gritted his teeth, eyes ablaze with outrage; colour had left his face. His voice was full of vehemence.

"Professor Snape isn't by any means a Death Eater, he risked his life to give information to Dumbledore, information that always helped us. The professor almost died—"

"Mr Potter," the man interrupted him, authoritarian. "What was it that convinced you of Severus Snape's innocence?"

The young man looked at the jury's faces as if he saw only empty seats and big space of air.

"His memories."

"His memories… which you haven't shown us, which could be fake, fabricated by the accused, and you only have as evidence the testimony of your closest friends, without a doubt influenced by you, making their declarations invalid."

Harry opened his mouth just to realized there weren't any words left, he had nothing to say; he turned to Hermione for help: the girl was biting her lip helplessly with clouded eyes, unable to find any rebuttal.

They had miserably lost the second part of the trial.

* * *

Potter went to the Whomping Willow, shrank by his defeat with the jury; he had to talk to Snape, it was time the man helped with his own defence. Nobody would know the dates, information and names that would prove his innocence better than him.

Granger and he stopped suddenly when they saw a bunch of people standing close to the willow, talking loudly, moving their hands, arguing. But when they noticed Harry's presence, they kept silence and watched them, stunned.

Harry walked with determination between them and soon began to run to avoid the willow's swings. Hermione ran behind him, noticing how people started to talk louder, apparently shaken up by Potter's arrival.

Harry knew something bad had happened, he didn't even need to ask; in his head there was already a firm suspicion of what was happening.

He found even more people on the entrance of the Shrieking Shack, in between he met Ronald, who was violently arguing with a man dressed up as a warden.

"Harry," Luna's soft, distant voice spoke. When he turned he found a pair of murky blue eyes. "They followed me here, it looks like they were waiting for me. I'm sorry, Harry."

"Where's Professor Snape?"

Luna looked at him square in the face; a breeze of decay appeared in her face, of upcoming clouds, of a stormy day.

"They took the professor to Azkaban."


	6. Azkaban's Prisons

**Disclaimer**: Nothing belongs to me. Rowling and Gato Azul are the owners of my soul (and this story).

* * *

Azkaban was a big, dark beast whose walls' stones were mouldy and blackened. When looking through the few windows of the place, one could only see shreds of dementors, their faces and cold hands stuck to the glasses. A frosty breath rose from the foundations of the prison. They sounded like echoes of chains and long moans coming from some faraway place.

Three days had passed before Hermione could convince the director of the prison of their right to talk to Snape. At that moment Harry and Hermione were climbing up the stairs towards the floor where they had locked up the Potion master.

Their footsteps kept sounding several seconds afterwards, infinitely; the sound carried on until the end of the stairs. Azkaban felt gigantic and yet the steps of the stairs were small, too small and irregular, and they didn't have a railing. If you slipped from one mouldy step, you'd surely fall. Both youngsters were grabbing the wall for dear life, trying to avoid that; they had been going up for a long time, their legs were already tired and they still hadn't reached their destiny.

The warden stopped suddenly, lightening up a long hallway.

"We're here."

The corridor was completely dark, only visible through the wand's light. It extended in a long path, impressing both Gryffindors with its dimensions. They walked through the cells; Harry thought that, no matter how much Snape was used to the dungeons, that prison was maybe too much for anyone, even Bellatrix hated that place. He remembered Sirius; he didn't want to picture him enclosed in those stone tombs for so many years.

Some prisoners looked through the small gaps of each door, growling. Some were loudly proclaiming their innocence, others were yelling obscenities to the girl; an old man surprised them, pulling out a hand through the small gap, reaching out for them, almost blind from the prison's darkness and howling like a madman. They both carried on walking behind the warden.

Maybe Snape was enraged, Harry thought. Maybe he blamed him for being there.

The warden opened a door.

"It's here. Y'have five minutes."

Potter stuck his head through the door; it was very tall, with a single-window at the top, almost touching the roof, a window too small and useless to be reached. A dim light barely shone through it that barely lightened up anything, which gave every form a bluish shade. The walls were darkened by time; they looked like big colossuses of stone, inexpungable, immovable. The air was frosty and humid, and there was a strong, rancid smell. Harry squinted, trying to see better in the dark. Hermione was hanging onto his shirt, following him hesitantly. The door closed loudly behind them.

"Professor Snape?"

They couldn't see him in the dim light and they couldn't use a _Lumos_ because they had taken their wands away as a requirement to let them in.

In a corner of the cell there was a bunch of straw where Snape laid. They couldn't distinguish the man's position quite well, but they knew that cluster of black must have been the man's body.

Harry walked towards the Potion Master silently, extending his hand to touch him.

"Professor Snape…"

The boy could make out the glint of eyes, looking at him.

"How are you, Professor Snape? How is your wound?" he asked him, trying to find the gauzes of his neck; he realized the Occlumens was wearing the same prisoner's clothes as Sirius.

Hermione's hand was clutching his arm. Harry could barely see the man's eyes; the rest of his face was indistinguishable from the poor light of the remote window.

"How is your wound?"

_What are you doing here, Potter?_

"We came here to talk to you. We're getting you out of here, by force if necessary. You don't belong here.

A rumbling noise scared him. It was some kind of mockery coming from Snape; he hadn't recovered his voice, but he had managed to make that strange, bitter growl.

_Don't come here to play the hero._

"Nobody is playing anything, professor. Please understand, you're already locked up, the next thing they'll want to do is condemn you to the dementor's kiss."

Snape supported his weak head against the straw, eyes lost.

"Professor, you have to give me some information, something to prove you're not guilty."

The black gaze quickly went back to him.

_I don't have anything left to tell you, Potter. I don't have anything else to show you. If the jury thinks I'm a Death Eater, it's none of your business._

He didn't accept that attitude; he was about to face him when Granger got in between to examine the former professor's neck.

The gauze was stained red in some parts, still wet in others.

"Harry, his wounds will get infected if he goes on like this. There's nothing clean here, nobody to take care of him."

A growl surged from the man's throat.

"Have you even eaten something?"

_You have no business being here, Granger._

Hermione quickly turned towards Harry, ignoring Snape.

"If we want him to survive, we have to get him out; either he gets condemned or he dies of infection in these conditions."

He looked around the cell closely; there was no gap in the walls, the dementors waited outside and they didn't even have their wands. There was no way they could get him out by force at the moment. They had to win the trial, and Snape didn't even want to cooperate.

The warden opened the door, letting in dim light.

"Time's over."

* * *

Both youths got out reluctantly; they had to wait until they left Azkaban to be able to talk to each other. They had insisted so much to get to that bloody prison and all they got in return was a visit that was as brief as useless; even if Snape had wanted to cooperate he wouldn't have had any time to do it. The prison's director flat out refused to allow a second visit; according to him, no prisoner could receive visitors. Both went back to Hogwarts in silence, each thinking about the alternatives they had left.

"We can go on with the trial without Snape," Harry said.

"And we'll have to, but Harry, if no one take cares of his wounds they'll surely get infected and it'll be very hard to manage something like that."

The boy shrunk.

"We can't get inside the prison. I'll show them the memories; it's the only solution I can think of."

She nodded.

"But we have to prepare ourselves for the next session, Harry, and quickly, before Snape gets any worse."

* * *

Every jury was there, the room's silence only broken by some coughs and echoes of the newcomers' steps. It was so full, there were people even standing on the stairs. The registrar smiled lightly while looking around. With a bell, the session got started.

Apparently, not only Snape was to be judged that day; Draco Malfoy too, who had been captured and was in the middle of the room, inside a cage. He was wearing his usual clothes, but wrinkled and dirty. His eyes were wet with fear, roaming on every jury's face until they found Harry's, where they stop, trembling and pleading. Harry shifted in his chair, uncomfortable. He didn't like the idea of speaking for every Death Eater present in that room; first, they'll focus on defending Snape, then they'll deal with Malfoy.

To his surprise, another cage ascended until reaching Malfoy's side; it was precisely the fugitive Hogwarts' director. The blonde beside him looked at him with horror and pity. The Occlumens supported himself weakly against the bars; his hands trembled in frenzy, with so much force that Harry and Hermione could notice it several meters away. He held his body against the cage to avoid falling; he was very dirty and pale, starving, with just a few shreds of clothes, grey skin and eyes surrounded by intense, dark spots, lips completely white.

The jury seemed to shiver a bit; they had imagined a cynical, smiling traitor, not a sickly, crippled one.

"Draco Malfoy, Severus Snape," the registrar began talking. "In the last session, the arguments presented by Mr Potter were discarded for being invalid. Do you have anything to say to defend yourself, Mr Snape?"

The man in the cage wasn't even looking at him, his eyes were fixed on the floor and seemed to be trying hard to ignore them all and pretend he wasn't there. Malfoy trembled behind his bars, muted by fear.

Harry stood up violently, aggressive rage building up inside him.

"He can't even talk! Nagini tore his throat apart; you should at least give him time to recover."

Hermione stood up too, making her chair screech.

"He's in a very delicate state and you keep him locked up in Azkaban! His wounds may get infected, and if they do, he won't even survive to see the end of this stupid trial."

The people on the podium started to murmur between them; some were peering at the registrar; others had their eyes fixed on Snape and Malfoy. The registrar could hear a whisper that made him nervous, that irritated him.

"Silence!" the registrar yelled, reclining on his chair. "Then, Mr Potter, putting aside any declaration from Severus Snape, do you have any evidence of your previous idle talk?"

Harry went to the front, walking around the cages to give them a little vial with fragments of the memories, but he hesitated when the registrar's hand took the vase. The man hadn't expected Snape to be there, and he was worried he'll see how his memories were handled to the jury.

The registrar emptied the vial's content in a small Pensieve; the images were shown just above him, allowing the whole room to see, a fact that mortified Potter even more. He could notice the Occlumens had raised his head to see his memories.

"He's going to be livid," he whispered, gaze fixed in the images.

"Maybe, Harry, but it was necessary," Hermione's hand caressed his shoulder.

Dumbledore's voice was clear in the room, almost as if the man had been brought back to life and was there, speaking to the whole hall.

_It must be you who kills me, Severus._

A wave of whispers and cries crossed the room.

"For Merlin's!" someone yelled in the middle of the crowd.

_You prepared him like a slaughtered pig…_

Snape shifted at the sound of his own voice and Harry trembled too, hearing for the second time such an impossible situation: Snape defending him from Dumbledore.

The images shut down there; Harry had only given them a reduced part of the memories, only the indispensable.

The registrar took a few moments to speak again, he seemed pensive, unpleasantly surprised; suddenly a big part of the jury was looking at him darkly, moved out of compassion for the man in the cage.

"The veracity of this scene is still into question, the accused in front of you is still…" he made sure to emphasize his words. "An Occlumens. He could've fabricated the memories beforehand, in the case he was apprehended. In any case, let's give him some time to recover the ability to speak."

He gave a strong bang to the table.

"Severus Snape is freed from Azkaban. He'll remain in house arrest until he's capable of defending himself."

The young Gryffindor breathed out, relieved.

* * *

The house arrest wasn't as favourable as they'd thought at the beginning; an endless list of conditions was spread in front of him. Harry reread the Minister's letter, his frown deepening after each line. Snape would be locked up in some house placed in the muggle world from which he'd not be able to leave because they were going to hex him. Nobody was to visit him without a special permit with at least three days of anticipation; they'll let someone chosen by Harry to take care of the man, but that person couldn't use magic while being inside the house (just like Snape couldn't use magic under any circumstance). This person would take care of his medical nursing and everything else, avoiding anyone else's intervention. The accused would be imprisoned until the fourth session of the trial, where his future would be determined.

McGonagall, Potter, Granger and Weasley were trying to agree on who was going to the house with the Potion Master. McGonagall, given her position as Hogwarts' Director, was discarded immediately. Harry, for his part, had to take care of too many things to get locked up in a house for Merlin knew how long. It was between Weasley and Granger, and given Hermione's usefulness, Ron was the most viable option, but also the least willing to accept.

"There's nothing wrong about it, Ron. Snape doesn't seem to be in the mood, he'll probably not even talk to you," the young woman said, trying to convince him. Weasley paled at the idea of being left alone with that man indefinitely.

"And what if he's guilty like the registrar said? Why do we have to take care of him?"

A glowing green stare fixed on him.

"He's innocent."

"Those memories could be false and you know it," the redhead defended himself. "You could be defending the person who murdered Dumbledore and your parents."

"He didn't do it," he said with growing resentment.

"Enough!" the brunette cut in. "We're not here to argue if he's guilty or not. Ron, you have to stay with him."

The boy looked at everyone's faces with a grimace of bitter discontent.

"I can't do it, I'm serious. Do you think the bat and me could be together?" the other three looked at each other, sceptical. They had to face it, it didn't sound convincing. "Do you think we'll manage not to kill each other?"

Harry averted his eyes.

"Alright, I'll do it," the scarred boy said. "It's my responsibility."

"Of course not, Harry, you can't. I know how to treat his wounds and I know I'll survive. Let me do it; I can prepare arguments for the trial and take care of him at the same time, no problem."

"Not a chance, Hermione. Not you," said Ron authoritative, regretting it a few seconds later when the girl's face turned slowly towards him, like a mother on the verge of exploding.

"Ronald Weasley!"

The boy let her go, timid, staying silent and very still. The ex-Prefect was still looking at him angrily.

"Well, as I was saying, I'll take care of him. I'll even go to pick him up today, it's not good for him to spend more time there."

But Hermione had another reason to volunteer herself. She didn't do it only to help Harry, but to protect him too. If Snape really was a murderer, he had the monstrous cunning to kill Dumbledore and then make the whole magic community doubt, to the point where some considered him innocent. She couldn't leave Harry at his mercy; she had to take care of him and watching him over at the same time. She wasn't going to let her friend with his guard down to a possible killer. Besides, she could also ascertain the truth and finally convince herself of the innocence or guiltiness of the man they were defending.

* * *

She opened the lock, pushing the door which screeched loudly, as if the house itself was complaining. Dust flew when they got in; Hermione was barely getting used to the dim light when the guards let Snape go and closed the door forcefully, leaving them confined. The man fell gracelessly, staining his prisoner's robe on the dirty floor. Guilty or not, the girl was starting to feel an annoying compassion towards him. She tugged his arm; the man was barely moving, grimacing of pain and exhaustion, flapping his arms uselessly without managing to hang onto anything in the middle of the empty room. The girl kneeled to level up with him and talk.

"It seems the room is on the second floor. Hold onto me, we have to go up. Hold on tight," she put one of the man's arms over her shoulders and grabbed him by the waist, forcing him to rely on her. Snape seemed uncomfortable, a flick of distaste and annoyance on his face. They walked slowly to the stairs, like two blind elders, sometimes extending their hands when they stumbled, considering the murky light and the room's dust.

Hermione let the man support his other side on the stairs' railway and started to climb equally slowly, step by step. The girl looked at Snape's bowed head, his quite dirty hair, his sallow, sunken face. He didn't look like the smug, tyrannical teacher. He'd seemed so tall when she was a child, having to stretch her neck upwards to look at him. Now that was the only thing remaining: filth and pallor and weakness.

Snape, sensing he was being watched, lifted his head.

"It won't take long, just a bit more," the girl said, grabbing him tighter to keep his lanky body beside her, upwards. But the Occlumens had been able to read her mind for a few seconds when he had looked at her. He knew she pitied him, despised him and still felt compassion for him. He'd have hated her for that in the past, but it didn't matter anymore, nothing mattered. Granger wasn't anything more than a force that helped him climb the stairs. Everything around him was like mere shadows, like straw dolls in his path.

* * *

_I know they hate me._

_I don't care if they judge me. I wouldn't care if they hailed me instead of accusing me. I know I'm better than them, I know I achieved what no one could've done: I fooled the Dark Lord._

_I am what I always wanted to be, I'm a winner, I'm victorious. I deserve Merlin's Order, I deserve admiration and honour, and even if you don't give it to me, I still deserve it._

_I am what I always feared. I'm a murderer, a miser, an Azkaban's prisoner. Everyone hates me, I'm all alone._

_But it doesn't matter that I've become a horrible version of executioner and hero. I'm none of that, honestly._

_Everything I did was for a reason, and that reason no longer exists._

_Now Lily could admire and love me; she won't, because she's dead. But she could. Now I deserve her love because I've done everything for her, now I deserve her forgiveness. And she won't._

_At this stage, I can't even forgive myself._

_For the first time I'm worthy of Lily; for her I went to the Order's side, for her I served Dumbledore to the point I hunted my own death, for her I gave my life to Voldemort._

_But I am unworthy of Lily too; for her I murdered._

_Everything has been for her; she who is not going to forgive me because she's dead and there's nothing to bind us anymore. Her son doesn't need me anymore and he's turning from the bond that has always linked us to the thing he was always meant to be: proof that she never loved me, will never love me, the living proof that her place will always be next to Potter._

_And that I'm alone._

_Everything I've done is useless, because I'm alone._

_I want to close my eyes to the world and for everything I ever felt for Lily to die inside me ___and burn_, burn completely along with me._

* * *

Hermione was climbing the stairs with food in hand; she had been so happy when she realized there was a supermarket and a library close by. Given that Snape was asleep (he was almost always asleep), she could go out for a while to shop groceries for the week. She cooked for him some chicken and poured a cup of tea; it was clear the man was poorly fed.

She entered the room without knocking; there was a numb light, feeble, that came from the window like a yellow breeze. Snape was laying down, back facing the door, in complete silence. The girl couldn't even hear his breathing. She closed the distance and put the tray on an old bureau next to the bed.

"I brought you some food, professor."

Nothing moved inside that room. The girl started to tear the chicken apart, releasing a delicious smell. It was burning her fingers a bit, but she tore it apart with gusto.

"Come on, professor. I know you're awake. I saved you the tender part."

She didn't know why she was talking to him like a child; that man didn't care if the flesh was tender. He only put effort into sleeping or pretending to be asleep.

Granger took the tray to the other side of the room, to face Snape. She crouched while still shredding the chicken.

"Professor Snape…"

The convalescent's eyes were closed; his face was that of a deadman, colourless and wearing a strange skin, almost grey.

"I know you're awake. Open your eyes or I'll force the food down, by any means necessary."

The man frowned, raising his lids, grimacing with bitterness and weariness. A fork was hovering quite close to his lips, a piece of smouldering chicken threaded in it.

"Open up."

_Leave it on the plate, I can eat on my own. Get out._

The girl kept the fork in its intrusive position.

"Open up."

Snape turned around painstakingly, letting Hermione face the frustrating view of his back.

"You have to eat," he heard a severe voice behind him, reminding him of Minerva. He perceived steps around the bed and a few seconds later the fork was in front of him again, with the same piece of smouldering chicken.

"Open up."

_Get out, Granger. You're insufferable._

"Open up."

The meat was pressed against his mouth, fighting to get in. He pushed the fork away with one hand, sending it to the floor, where it got full of dirt. The brunette's eyes were wet in anger.

"That was really rude."

_Get out._

"Don't eat, then. You're behaving like a petulant child," she stood up with determination, taking the tray with her, without picking up the fork from the floor. Before she left she glared at him, condemning like an outraged mother, which Snape had always thought didn't fit her. "Don't think I love to be here, all locked up. You should be at least kinder."

After that, she slammed the door.

* * *

She climbed the stairs at night, with a new tray of food. She opened the door again without knocking, knowing the man was asleep by his choppy breathing. She left the tray on the bureau and stood in front of the bed for a while, watching him.

She pitied Snape, after all.

It was unpleasant to feel something like that for a man like him, who had never been compassionate or considerate. Somehow, it could be said that she was looking at him for the first time, without thinking about Voldemort, without fearing him, nor considering him a threat.

He was curled up like a child, trembling by the fever, still wearing the prisoner's clothes; he desperately needed a bath, but Hermione felt neither encouraged nor strong enough to try and force him to presentable. There were just the two of them, after all; it didn't matter, nobody would see him like that apart from her.

She got close to give him the fever potion, pouring it in his lips. Snape gulped obediently, barely aware of what was happening around him, and closed his eyes again.

She regarded his dusty face, his shaking, bony hands.

"Did you want to kill Dumbledore?" she asked quietly, wishing a second later that Snape hadn't heard her.

The night light reflected against his eyes, which weren't looking at her, fixed on the window. Hermione felt overwhelmed by the darkness and silence, by the lost gaze and the blue light shining against it. Snape didn't look like Snape, it was like he didn't even see her, as if he didn't know she was there and some voice inside his head had asked him if he had wanted to kill Dumbledore.

The man tried to speak; with his useless voice, he only managed to pronounce blurry, unintelligible syllables. Then he put his head against the pillow meekly and sunk in sleep.

Hermione stayed a few more minutes beside his bed, vial in hand, facing the half-blood asleep, watching carefully the sharp, heady curve of his nose, his too-thin lips, his frown.

And her wary pity turned, for a second, into a crushing feeling of compassion. For a second she believed in his innocence completely, but clouds of rationality entered her head again and started to question everything. Was there some infallible way of knowing the truth?


	7. The Dragon Spits Fire

**Disclaimer**: Nothing belongs to me. Rowling and Gato Azul own this.

* * *

**7\. The Dragon Spits Fire**

The man was laying on the mattress, noticeably annoyed, frowning. Hermione was somewhat relieved to find such a common expression in his face, instead of all the other ones from the days before, unfamiliar and disturbing to her.

"How do you feel?"

She left the tray on the bureau without turning to look at him, to avoid getting a response she didn't want to know. The man looked at the food with intense disdain, as if he wanted to throw it to the floor.

"Don't even try it, professor Snape," the girl said, guessing his thoughts.

_Get out, Granger._

"I want to see you eating what I brought, you're too weak."

Snape looking at the plate as if considering the idea of trying, but finally didn't and closed his eyes.

"Professor Snape, yesterday you fainted just by standing up. Don't tell me you're not hungry."

The lying down frame didn't move.

"I'll have to force you if you don't cooperate."

"Da—re."

The girl didn't hesitate and walked to him, pulling his shirt, then smashed the piece of fruit against his closed mouth. She only managed to get Snape to throw the fork away, just like the last time.

_What do you think you're doing, Granger? Who do you think you are?_

"I'm just trying to get you to eat something," she said, kneeling to pick up the fork with fruit and the one with chicken from the day before.

"For Merlin! Please, eat something, professor Snape. Have you seen yourself in front of a mirror? You look like a walking corpse."

She was talking to him kindly, almost begging, giving him another piece of apple, like a mother to a stubborn child.

"Eat something."

_I don't need you to feed me._

The girl hurried to put the tray on his legs, looking at him impatiently.

The pieces of fruit and buns that the girl had brought tempted him, he was so hungry, he hadn't eaten anything since days ago; it was hard for him to give up that food. He took the fork to his mouth and chewed without energy. Only then did Granger stood up from the edge of the bed and stood in the threshold.

"I got you some clothes, professor, but they're all muggle, unfortunately. You can take off those Azkaban's robes and take a shower, afterwards I'll use some healing spells. Your wounds are probably dirty, and I don't want them to get infected."

The man swallowed the apple with boredom, barely paying any attention to the girl's words.

* * *

The wet, black hair was slipping from her fingers. She removed the gauzes slowly; Snape smelled like soap, he had just taken a shower and put those muggle clothes. Hermione thought he wouldn't be very happy, she had only found a brown shirt and grey trouser, colours he never wore, but the Potion Master didn't complain. Maybe, after wearing prison's clothes, he didn't mind wearing that.

She focused on the healing spells; the bandages were full of dirt, and the flesh cuts were dirty too. Hermione wasn't sure they looked good; they had blood scabs. She scrubbed them with energy; the man shifted, looking at her darkly.

_Be careful, Granger._

"They could get infected, they're dirty."

She had gotten alcohol at a chemist; she poured it slowly on his neck. The Potion Master gritted his teeth, stiffening, closing his eyes.

_Fucking damn you, Granger. Be more careful!_

She seized his long hours of sleep to go out and look for that library she had seen. She brought back to the house several books, even a child story that reminded her of those times her dad read her stories.

One of her favourites: Beauty and Beast.

Even though she had never dreamed of being like Belle. Being locked up with a gigantic, furry animal who roared and threw things away didn't sound particularly nice.

She laughed a bit about her situation; when she had been a child she'd have never imagined she would be imprisoned in a house arrest, with a neurotic wizard, just like those princesses of those stories, kept away in towers, guarded by a dragon who spat fire. That last part reminded her a lot of Snape.

* * *

Granger had turned to be quite noisy; she went in and out with a broom, sweeping everywhere, muggle-style. He heard her climb the screeching stairs, heard her drag a mop in the adjacent room, to show up in his later on, wetting all the floor.

He'd have liked to be able to close his eyes and sleep for many hours like on previous days, but his body wasn't so weak, and it wasn't easy for him to sleep, much less with that girl swarming around.

Hermione noticed the man glaring at her from his bed. On previous days he had been so lethargic he didn't detect her presence and didn't notice the fuss Granger made, dragging a barrel all over the second floor.

"Aren't you going to sleep today, professor Snape?"

His pale face stiffened even more.

"I'm n—not your pro—fe—ssor."

Hermione blinked, mop in hand, dripping and leaking on the floor. It was true, the man wasn't her teacher anymore, but she couldn't imagine herself calling him any other way: Snape? Mr. Snape? She'd rather stay like that.

"And how I'm supposed to address you now, sir?"

The Occlumens watched her with empty eyes for a few seconds, then he turned on his side, giving her his back, without answering. Granger didn't understand those moods very well. She kept on moping, without minding the laying frame that growled every time the barrel made some noise as she dragged it over the wood's floor.

* * *

The Ministry had sent them an owl with the Prophet and some letters her friends wrote her, and soon the daily reading of the messages and the newspaper were the only means of contact Hermione had with the outer world; it was the only thing that gave some purpose to her days, to the longer and heavier afternoons of confinement.

She had already cleaned the house over and over again, to the last corner, to the most remote, dusty nook.

She didn't have anything else to do. Snape wasn't eating anything she cooked and was losing weight too quickly; she could already see the outline of his ribs and his spinal cord's line. She tried to force him to eat, but the food ended up in the floor.

She cried many times at the foot of the stairs, of sadness, of distress.

She couldn't find her parents, she couldn't see Ron, she couldn't even manage to make the man she was supposed to keep alive taste some food.

She begged, yelled, pleaded, demanded him… she didn't know what else to do.

_I hope you and professor Snape are doing good._

Pieces of Harry's letters were floating in her mind, his voice, Ron's, scattered around her memories.

_You know how's the bat, but don't worry, Herms. Tho if I were you, I'd have already suffocated him with a pillow._

Sometimes she smiled a bit, when she remembered his sardonic smile and red hair, intensely red.

_Please, Hermione, don't let him sink_, Potter's lines whispered to her.

She wasn't sure she'd make it, nothing she told Snape seemed to have any value to him. He just looked at her with an air of indifference and superiority, face more and more exanimate, body every day thinner.

* * *

The half-blood snoozed, hands stretched over his chest, exactly like a mummy. The girl slipped between his lips a spoon full of soup. Whatever she could manage to give him would be a gain. The man opened his eyes startled, then his grimace turned instantly from fright to irritation and disdain.

_What… the hell do you think you're doing in my room? Get out!_

"You have to eat," and she pointed determinately the spoon to his mouth. The man's hand got in the way, but Hermione grabbed him by the wrist and held on tight, still holding the spoon with her free hand.

"Stop it. Look what you're doing, you're sick! Eat, just look at yourself, look how thin you are."

_That's none of your—_

She seized the distraction and put the spoon in his mouth; the man fought violently, but his strength was scarce and didn't manage to push her away completely.

The girl was all big eyes, all her was a brown gaze, wet, vibrant, transparent.

"What's wrong with you? You were never like this, you were always strong, always moving around. You never sat to feel sorry for yourself."

_Shut up, Granger. You think you know everything, typical of you._

"I know you weren't what you're now."

_And what am I now, Granger? Do you even know that? You twat, petulant brat._

"Does nothing matter to you? Then, if everything it's the same to you, then tell me on which side were you, with us?"

_With who? The glorious golden trio?_

The shaggy girl had stood up from the edge of the bed and now looked down to the man, a firm belief pushing her into motion.

"On Dumbledore's side, the man you killed."

She couldn't perceive any shift in Snape's expression.

"Then everything you're being accused of is true?"

Snape raised his chin, a long, sharp chin, with a noticeably defiant arrogance.

_Are you the judge who will convict me, Granger?_

"You killed Dumbledore, the man who protected you. You were an accomplice of professor Charity's torture and murder…" Hermione was barely digesting all the horrible, bloody crimes the Potion Master was being accused of and she was beginning to feel disgusted by the man in front of her. She remembered Charity's kind voice when she gave her lessons, her slow, careful way of closing her books at the end of her classes, and a rampaging outrage was spreading inside her. "How could you?" she spat, throat dry by her rage. "What kind of heartless man are you? You're accused of those things and that's not it, you also cut George's ear! You betrayed us all those years! You even revealed Voldemort the prophecy, Harry's parents are dead because of you, James Potter, Lily Potter! How many more are on your list, professor Snape? How many more did you kill?"

The man turned his eyes to the wall, but Granger was too exalted and grabbed him by the shoulders to shake him. The prisoner seemed stunned by that action.

"You have to tell me! Did you do it?"

His black eyes hovered on hers, with something like uncertainty forming inside them, but soon coldness took over again.

_And what if I did it, Granger? Will you stop helping in the trial? Won't you defend me anymore?_

Hermione let him go suddenly, as if being close to him scared her.

"You're awful. I don't understand why Dumbledore saved you."

_That crazy old man—_

Hermione couldn't contain herself any longer and smacked her hand against the pale cheek, causing a sharp noise against skin.

"Enough! Why are you so calm? If you have done all those horrors, how can you be so calm? They're going to execute you," she put her hands on her forehead, desperate, overwhelmed to be in front of the raw image of the inner evil of people, of consciousness's rottenness. "Professor Charity, Lily Potter, what did they do to you? Why did you hand them to a death like that?"

The half-blood trembled at the edge of the mattress, without completely recovering from that slap that had twisted his neck. As she saw him, Hermione regretted hitting him, maybe he deserved it, but that wasn't the moment, not when he was so frail.

"Do you know Harry heard her mother's screams? Do you? He told me. Sometimes he heard her in his dreams, in the visions his scar created."

Snape shivered.

"Doesn't that matter to you? You don't care what professor Charity or Harry's mother felt when they were murdered?"

_Enough, Granger._

The mental voice sounded exhausted. The man laid down, still trembling; it was obvious he wanted her to stop.

"They're dead and you don't care—"

"Shut up, Granger!"

He got up from the bed unexpectedly, facing her, with his booming voice, with his tone of crashing roar. Hermione hadn't thought he'd had the strength to move like that, so quick and lively. She stepped back unconsciously, fearing of being hit.

"You don't know shite, stupid girl! Don't you dare talk about me! Don't you dare mention her!"

The girl didn't understand what was happening, the tender fibre, the raw wound where she had put her hands in.

"Of course I bloody care, you fucking, conceited twat! Potter is telling the truth! Is that what you wanted to hear?"

"No… I—" the girl took several steps back, protecting her face with her hands, as if she really thought he was going to punch her.

"Now you know, go and think of a theory and gloat…"

The tall, loud frame suddenly bowed, coughing desperately, until he was kneeling again on the floor. Granger got close, shaken up, reaching up slowly to the laying lump. But his blazing gaze burned on her.

_Get out! Get out and don't come back!_

The girl stumbled to the door, groping the dark with hurry. When she exited the room, she closed the door and breathed in deeply with all her might, still terrified of Snape's disfigured, wrathful face, of his incandescent eyes, but, above all, of the words he'd uttered.

_Potter is telling the truth._

* * *

She opened the door slowly, first looking through the lock, then getting in with a plate of stew on her hands. The sunlight entered through the window, spreading the bright breadth of its rays. She found herself in the room, hearing clearly the ragged, irregular breathing. The man was upside down over the mattress, bare feet hanging over the edge of the bed.

A glass of water was spilt on the floor.

Hermione picked it up and examined the fallen prisoner. She hadn't been able to sleep, she'd only thought about him, about the things Harry said, about her own memories. Insomnia's coldness was making her dizzy. Her own inner coldness which her confusion caused had also been eating her from her insides all night.

She thought about every single one of her moments with Snape, about every comment she had heard about him in the seven years she had known him.

His awful, sullen grimaces; his threatening, despot voice; his ability to easily run over anyone who got close to him with insults. His personality matched exactly with that of a Death Eater's. And yet there was evidence of the contrary, the stony trust Harry held for him and Dumbledore's posthumous wishes of keeping him alive.

Just for them, she didn't dare to condemn him completely.

Nonetheless, Snape had shown in those crucial moments some mercy, like when he was a referee in a Quidditch's match just to protect Harry.

When she finished pondering the whole matter, she was as disoriented as ever.

She kept on analysing the still figure. Who else could tell her truth but him, who apparently had never said something genuine in his life?


	8. The Nomadic Virgin

**Disclaimer**: Nothing you recognise belong to me. J. K. Rowling and Gato Azul own my body and this work.

* * *

**8\. The Nomadic Virgin**

Before that fight, Snape had only used his normal ill-temper, but afterwards, he seemed to plot new ways of making Hermione's life impossible. Even his repertoire of insults had grown considerably.

That afternoon, the foolish man threw his food and Hermione had to start cleaning that mess without magic, resigned and crestfallen, without even scolding him or glaring at him for his ingratitude.

Downstairs someone knocked on the door. Hermione picked up the tray, put there the pieces of broken plate and destroyed food on it and hurried down to open.

Harry was in the threshold, hollow-eyed and serious. The door was barely opening when Hermione was already jumping to his arms, hugging him tightly, talking to his ear.

"Harry," the boy felt her cling to his body like it was a plank in the middle of the ocean. "I've missed you so much, Harry. How's Ron?"

The scarred boy shrugged.

"You know how he is."

"Harry, Snape—" she got away from him, red-faced and with swollen eyes, showing she was close to tears. "I don't know what to do with him anymore, Harry. He only talks to insult me, he throws away all the food, he doesn't even let me touch him to change his bandages. I don't know what to do, Harry."

His green gaze traced her face. Suddenly, Granger seemed possessed by some of her ideas.

"A few days ago, Snape confessed you were telling the truth."

The boy raised his brows.

"I assumed you didn't believe me."

"Harry, you have to tell me. How am I to help you with the trial?"

"I don't know, Hermione. The professor—"

Snape appeared at the top of the stairs, supporting himself with a piece of a broken broom, using it as a cane. His expression turned sour when he recognized the young man on the ground floor.

"Potter, to what do I owe the visit of such an important celebrity to my humble… prison?"

The boy dropped Hermione's hand which had curled in his and quickly climbed the wood steps.

"Professor Snape," he raised his hand, swallowing hard, hoping in the inside that finally, just for a change, things could go well, that without resentment everything could get better and not end up in curses and verbal bites.

But Snape watched his hand as if it was a piece of trash.

_I'm neither Black nor Lupin to go around you like a lapdog._

"Professor Lupin died in battle," Harry said, trying to not react violently at the man's poisonous response.

The sunken, bitter eyes fell on several spots of the room; Snape seemed confused and surprised for a few moments, then he went and locked himself up in his room without saying anything else, never taking the stretched hand.

Hermione's image reached Harry; her big eyes, always wide and careful, were waiting for him downstairs.

The languid, yellow light was sliding along the wall, filling a part of the inhabited room, splashing their faces with sun's fragments, orange and white, colouring their sad eyes with dawn's glow.

* * *

Harry was in the house until the day darkened; Hermione walked him to the door and said goodbye in the middle of the dried garden full of mauves around the house. She stayed outside until she saw him disappear in the distance.

It seemed like the world had been emptied, that nobody existed in those long streets around her and all she had left was Snape, laying down upstairs. The blunt silence was crushing her chest, moving in the middle of the loneliness like a tiny bug.

She sat on the last step of the stairs, watching a stain of humidity on the wall with the same attention she'd give an abstract painting, trying to decipher it or find some kind of meaning to an unreasonable form.

Harry had talked a lot about the fourth session; he wasn't explicit, but he implied it would be postponed indefinitely and that they should prepare themselves well because it'd probably be the final one. And yet he didn't want to say anything else. Granger would've to keep waiting in the dark and uncertainty.

But Hermione couldn't bear to breathe that house's air, to drink her insipid coffee, to stand his asphyxiating aphonia.

She didn't want to see Snape anymore; Harry didn't understand the conflict that arose inside her when she entered the Potion Master's room: sympathy, pity, resentment, anguish, and lording over the rest, guilt. How had Snape managed to leave her feeling guilty? It was absurd, and yet she couldn't avoid it: to think the man had the right to throw any trays he wanted to the floor and systematically insult her.

She went up to sleep unwillingly, not wanting to face the professor. She reached the room and knocked lightly twice, then she got in. It was dark, a soft wind moved the fluffy sheets of the curtain, letting her see tree's branches, looking like twisted hands and, far away, streetlights of dim light, like that of a dream.

She recognized the man's body under the sheets, his face deep in the shadows. She sat on the carpet, thinking about Ron, feeling a hot tear forming on one of her eyes. A moan made her turn towards him, looking for his face in the dark.

"Professor Snape?" she whispered close by, just watching the lines of his closed eyes and a bunch of black hair that hid his features. She extended her hand to his forehead, hesitant to touch him, barely brushing his wet, burning skin before taking from the bureau a vial of fever potion and pouring a few drops in his lips. Her muscles tensed when his eyelids fluttered open.

_Granger?_

"You have high fever; I gave you some medicine. I'm sorry I woke you up."

_I forgive you, Granger. After all, that is the lesser of my evils and the least of your insolences too._

The girl watched her, half surprised and half irritated, weakly holding the vial. Snape pushed her hand, causing the potion to spill and stain Hermione's pants. The dark liquid dripped from the girl's hand, falling on a small puddle on the floor; the stain on her clothes was slowly expanding.

"What the…?"

Her brown eyes looked at the wet floor, then the man, smothered rage inside them.

_I warned you, Granger. Stay away from me or face the consequences._

"You're such a…" but she held her tongue and slammed the door, tears falling from her eyes.

* * *

She couldn't stand him anymore. He insulted her, threw the food, the potions, what was left? That he wetted the bed just to leave her with the task of cleaning them?

She let herself fall on the stairs, crying like a child. She was embarrassed by that; after everything she went through with Harry and Ron, isolated in a tent, she ended up crying for something as insignificant as Snape having thrown a vial.

Maybe she was done with things being so hard. It was frustrating that, despite the fact the war was over, she still had to fight, without being able to be with Ron or look for her parents. Without being able to return to normalcy.

After some minutes of distressed wetness, she dried her tears; she had recovered some strength after crying. She walked to the Occlumens' room, in the night of buzzing silences, of guessing eyes in the dark, to try to save Snape from the pit he was falling in.

* * *

_I opened the envelop, recognizing the handwriting immediately. That explained why the letter was so short. Snape was looking at me, I tried to ignore his piercing stare on me and started to read._

_Ron was saying goodbye. He hadn't gotten the permit to come here and say goodbye in person, and he had to help George at the store which had been his and Fred's. He didn't know how long was he to remain away, he wasn't very explicit; even in his distant voice depicted in words and scroll I hoped to find something more, that he told me he loved me, that he'll miss me, that he'll promise me he'd write, but I found none of that in his short letter. I thought he was angry with me for having abandoned him, for isolating myself here on my own will._

_The sadness that his cold lines caused me was way too big for such a short letter. I withstood the days hoping he may come, that in the least expected moment someone'd knock the door and when I opened it I'd find his shiny hair and sardonic smile. Sometimes Ron is like that, it seems he doesn't know anything that's going around him, like he doesn't know how much I need him. And yet I wrote back immediately, I told him I'd wait for him, that I wished him luck and I yearned for the day we'd see each other again._

_I hope he answers back. He doesn't know the relief it'd be to feel him a bit closer, to feel his presence in this lonely house, in this confinement._

_Snape keeps looking at me with mocking curiosity in his face. I don't know, I feel this kind of sadness for him, very recurrent; it's like he's always faking it, like he tries so hard to seem harsh and let me know how much he hates me and how silly I am to him._

_But anything I may feel for Snape is always a duality; after all, I don't live with one, but two Snapes, the possible culprit and the possible hero. I never know which one to believe and I'm torn between being kind, between my condescending urges and my outrage for Dumbledore' and other's death._

_At the end I'm unable to take any road: neither do I write with conviction an argument to save him, nor do I drop out the case._

_I hate being like this._

* * *

The Ministry's big, grey owl was drinking water, standing on the bureau beside the bed; Snape was watching her distractedly, eyes empty and lifeless. Granger was checking the mail enthusiastically and unfolded the newspaper, enjoying the best part of her day.

She started to read out loud, glancing at the man to see if she managed to catch his attention. There were several of Skeeter's articles that talked about Harry's alleged flings. Hermione snorted tiredly when she noticed she was mentioned as one of the boy-who-lived's _lovers_; in the picture, there was the hug she and Harry shared in the Triwizard Tournament.

"It's amazing they still have that photo."

Snape rolled his eyes, bored. Granger's gaze still searched the pages and images, curious. A headline alarmed her and read the whole texted out loud. Some defected Death Eaters had been attacked and murdered; even Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy had been assaulted. If the Aurors hadn't found them on time maybe they would be dead. Both were recovering in St. Mungo; afterwards, they'll be taken to Azkaban for the trial.

Hermione bit her lips; it was a relief to be in that hidden house, where they'd hardly find Snape. When she finished reading, she looked in the man's face a trace of the anguish she was feeling, but the Occlumens' gaze was still fixed on the owl, who caressed its feathers.

She opened Harry's letter; as she had expected, he told her to take care and explained that the Ministry had forbidden him to visit them again.

"For Merlin's sake, they won't even let Harry visit us," the Potion Master came back from his lethargy, watching her with boredom.

_What a tragedy. I don't know how we will manage to survive without Potter._

Hermione didn't pay him attention and kept looking for information in the papers but found nothing. She sat on the carpet to drink some juice, uneasy. She hoped that the fact they were isolated meant safety for them.

* * *

She opened the storybook, caressing with open hands the yellow, smooth pages, enjoying the smell of an old book that was so familiar to her. The left page was embellished by a capricious drawing of sharp colours, waves and thin coils. Bella pulled back, scared by the blunt, rough shape of the beast, standing in front of her, showing claws and fangs, like a wolf about to eat her. Hermione smiled as she remembered the whole story, imagining the beast's huge body folding itself meekly under Bella's caress.

"Sto…ries?" a disdainful voice stuttered on her back; when she turned around, she found Snape's long eyes.

_You're too old for that, don't you think? Who'd have thought, Gryffindor's Brain having fun reading children's tales?_

"Storybooks have some implicit psychology, professor."

_No shit._

One of his eyebrows rose and he sneered.

"This one, for example, Beauty and Beast. It's a classic, maybe you've heard of it."

Deep down Hermione didn't even hope that such a trivial, curt man would be remotely interested in that kind of stories, or even knew them by chance.

"The prince is turned into a beast by a witch and—"

The Potion Master made an indifferent gesture with his hand, implying he wanted her to shut up.

Hermione sighed, turning back to the book, where the beast was fighting with his aggressive fangs. And she thought of Snape.

* * *

Granger was picking up glass fragments from the floor; one of them had cut her hand, making her bleed. Again, the Occlumens had smashed the tray to the ground, the food she had taken so long to prepared scattered all over the floor. The plate and vase had shattered when they fell, and their fragment filled the room. Hermione picked up the mess without complaining, without even yelling at the man that watched her from the bed with a haughty expression of unhealthy satisfaction.

She felt she'd soon reach her limit: wasted food every day, insults, grimaces and recently he had thrown coffee or healing vials on the sheets or carpet to make her wash them; he broke her letters and ripped the newspaper so she couldn't read them. The only thing Hermione had managed to save was that loaned book from the library. If things kept on like that, she'd explode against the man, but she tried hard to contain herself; Harry asked her in every letter to treat him well, and she did it as far as her patience and stoicism allowed her.

When she finished cleaning the floor, she sat on the naked floor (the carpet was drying up on the garden) to try and read the pieces of paper that had been Harry's letter. At noon she cooked a stew that the Occlumens threw to the floor again, without even tasting it.

Before it darkened, she went out to wash the new set of sheets which the professor had stained with tea; the sky was covered by big, dark clouds that forbid with an ethereal wall any kind of sunlight.

The cold wind messed her hair up; far away, in the sky's vault a ray was born, a big snake of light, slipping between the harsh wind. She thought about what to do with the recently washed sheets, fearing they'd fly away, pushed by the wind and ending up in the mud. She gathered them in her arms, ending up a bit wet, to get them inside the house and lay them down in the empty room. She walked to the front door and found Snape's sullen face behind the glass, watching her with derision; his unusual presence in the kitchen made her worry. She tried to open the door, noticing with desperation it was locked on the inside.

"Professor Snape!" she yelled, knocking the glass with one hand while holding the wet sheets with the other. "Could you please open the door?"

The Occlumens' disdainful smile only increased her fear.

"Sir, it looks like it's going to rain," the girl said on the other side of the glass, hair flying on her face and sky booming in explosions of light behind her.

_It looks like it, Granger._

"Please open the door."

"No," he said with a voice too firm and determined, as hoarse as it had been in the past.

Granger stood by the door; the man went to the kitchen, destroying her hopes of getting inside until he went back and unlocked the door. Hermione watched impatiently as it started raining slowly, and what began as a tiny drop on her forehead ended up becoming a constant, generous rain, which ripped leaves from the trees and turned the garden's soil into mud.

The girl's cries reached the man, who was reading a book in the living room, sitting on the stairs. He peeped with curiosity to see her getting soaked by the relentless storm, hair stuck on her face, already dripping, with sheets on her arms that looked like a ghost tangled in her arms.

"Professor, please… let me in, it's cold."

The man was sipping coffee calmly, smiling at her cynically.

_Really, Granger? I think it's for the best you stay there; you'll splash the floor with those shoes._

"For Merlin, professor Snape!"

_If you'll excuse me, Granger._

He turned slowly, with an affected, irritating elegance that infuriated her; she hit and kicked the door with no avail. She then looked at the hostile sky, with a feeling of impotence and vulnerability that made her want to cry right there and then. She sat in the mud, tired of waiting, watching the drops fall apart at the end of their long fall. The storm eventually worsened, forcing her to cover herself with the wet sheets, like a shroud or a cocoon. The rain started to decrease, falling languidly, forming small waves in the ponds. Finally, when the sky seemed finished, the door opened.

Granger trembled in the threshold, wrapped in her white cloak and soaked like a nomadic virgin, without stepping in, watching him in confusion.

_What, would you rather sleep outside? Because if that's the case…_

"No!" she got inside quickly, smearing mud with her shoes full of mire.

_I hope you'll clean that, Granger._

The girl watched him, tightening her lips.

_The fact that you look like a tramp right now doesn't mean you have to behave like one._

The Gryffindor spread the sheets and took her shoes off, leaving them in a corner. She noticed the presence of the Ministry's owl; his feathers were wet and he extended his wigs, inflating his chest, with huge, yellow eyes fixed on her.

"Orestes?"

The Occlumens turned his head towards her while sipping coffee.

_Your mail's here, Granger._

The girl perked up a bit at the news.

"And where is it?"

The man's gaze travelled to a trash can close to the table; the girl understood quickly, jumping to pull out the ripped paper. Discontent showed on her face when she saw Ron's name in one of the envelopes; the letter was shredded to pieces so small they were completely intelligible. Snape had left the envelope full of scroll's confetti.

A pair of irate, wet eyes looked for the man's face.

_And to think, even with his stupidity, Weasley wrote you five pages. Pity._

Granger was watching him, holding in her chest vitriolic, swollen rage. It was clear on her face the barely contained desire to insult and slap him. She picked up her letter's pieces, running to the second floor, eyes wet.

He opened the door without knocking. Granger was sitting on the floor in front of a row of torn paper; she turned her wet face to look at him; her redden eyes seemed to pass through him, fixed on him like nails.

_What's wrong, Granger? Are you mad?_

The girl grimaced and turned her head away. The man's cynicism irritated her even more, his almost satisfied expression, while she saw him lay down on the bed.

"You have been… you have behaved like a..."

_Like a what? Granger._

"You're sick," the girl told him with a mixture of compassion and hate that the man didn't like.

"And you're an imbe—cile," it irritated him to have been unable to insult her fluently.

_Instead of wasting your unproductive time bothering me, you should go and clean up the mess you left downstairs._

The girl stood up, without stopping glaring at him, and slammed the door violently.

* * *

_Ron was always right, Snape's a git. I know he's important to you, but Harry, that man has nothing to do with me, I mean, I can't stand him anymore. The other day I tried to change his bandages and he threw my hands away with this expression of disgust that—well, do you really think he's repulsed by me, Harry?_

_When I'm close to him, I feel like I do everything wrong, I don't know. When he looks at me like that, with that haughty expression you know better than anyone, I feel like I'm an idiot, like I'm still the immature girl raising her hand in Potion's class._

_It's like I'm doing something inappropriate all the time, as if my mere presence was offensive to him._

_Believe me, I've tried to be patient, but he's unbearable sometimes. I know that he's a good man to you, or that at least some part of him is still worth it, but it's hard to remember it after receiving so many of his slights. Besides Harry, you have to consider I haven't seen what you have; for me, he's the same person who killed Dumbledore, I can't see the other side of the moon, you understand? I can't until you show me._

_Please, next time you write to me, put a spell on the paper, so Snape cannot rip it apart as he did to the last letter, I couldn't read it._

_Love you and miss you, Hermione J. Granger._

* * *

**NT:** Remember I'm not the author of this story, I'm just the translator! Also, this will get way worse before it gets better, bear with me.


	9. The Lightning Witch

**Disclaimer**: Y'all know the drill. Rowling and Gato Azul own this.

* * *

**9\. The Lightning Witch**

He had thought Granger unpleasant since the first day he met her. He was annoyed by her urges to prove she was smarter than the rest, he despised her for that innocent air she carried, for her belief she was always right.

Granger was a stuck-up, and yet she didn't seem to notice, didn't seem to be aware of her own pedantry.

That irritated him even more.

Lily wasn't like Granger; even if she knew the answer in class, she stayed quiet, letting others answer, she didn't have to prove everyone how smart she was, she was content being useful when someone needed her, with using what she knew to help others.

Granger was 'Miss Perfect'. Of course, Potter couldn't have found another little friend so according to his personality.

Now that he had her under her mercy, he was going to prove to her that her ridiculous ability to memorize page after page word from word wouldn't work with him. He was going to show her how moronic and daft she really was.

Little insolent brat.

A smell of burnt wood got in from the window. Snape laid down on the mattress. He could hear some random noises, like scourges, whips on the air. He didn't know what kind of muggle thing emitted those noises and they alarmed him, as they repeated several times. A lighting bolt's light hurt his pupils. The man stood up, raising his head to hear more clearly. The whipping kept on buzzing in the wind, sounding closer and closer. Another lighting bolt splashed the room full of light.

And then Snape saw _that_ wasn't lightning.

Green rays bounced off the walls, the hexes soared in the air, hissing like tongues of fire. Snape could see some white faces on the trees, he recognized them, they were Death Eater's masks. In another era, that same pristine mask, made of rigid porcelain, had been his own face.

He got close to the window to take a better look at them. A bolt shattered the glass, but no fragment got him. The pieces flew in front of him, soaked by the blue light that had destroyed them.

He wasn't afraid.

The idea of one of those green bolts sinking in his chest and him closing his eyes while falling almost weightlessly, with his body struck by a bolt of lightning, was to him at that moment dangerously attractive. He took one step towards the window, now glassless. He stepped on the glass with bare feet, without feeling any pain.

The past never really went away, and it was precisely his past that was looking for him to make him pay. He wasn't trying to avoid it. The porcelain's masks multiplied between branches and darkness. He had the overwhelming feeling that, behind one of those masks, he could find his own face.

* * *

A rumbling noise woke her up; the room was strangely lightened up. She thought at first it was an electric storm, but the green blazes in front of her window told her otherwise.

She recognized immediately the explosion of lights as the ones created by dangerous curses, and the newspaper article popped up in her mind. Her legs ran abruptly and clumsily to the room where Snape rested.

The first thing she saw when she opened the door was the little lamp on the bureau getting destroyed in pieces by a bolt. Snape's long neck, shady even with so much light, walking forward; hexes brushed him, stirring the air beside him, lighting up his face for a few seconds, but he kept walking forward, with an impassive face, as if in the other side of the room there was a mermaid's call.

"Get away from the window!"

Her cry was useless and powerless, for it was absorbed by the blue lightning' roar.

"Professor Snape, they're gonna kill you!"

Then she understood it, that was precisely the man's goal, that in a few seconds the light would be quenched and she'd be alone in that house, with Snape's body lying on the glass. The mere idea made her arm's hair stand up.

The idea of darkness and death.

She got out of the trench, ready to put herself in front of him and push him out of the line of fire. Snape hadn't expected her; the collision of their bodies made him lost balance and he crashed down, the fall leaving him protected by the wall. Granger felt a hex pass right over her shoulder, the bolt's trail burnt her skin. She quickly moved her arm to create a spell that protected the window's hole, but a hex managed to get inside before her shield could close completely. Its green light penetrated her pupils, almost blinding her, straight to her, unavoidable, like an arrow of fire; she didn't have enough time to move, she just managed to think about Ron's letter, the one she'd never be able to read.

* * *

Granger was wrapped in a green light, waving her wand like the director of an orchestra, as if she was the one commanding those flashes in the middle of the night darkness. The room lightened up suddenly, as if a star had been born right there, its eye incandescent, too much light, whiteness and nothing else, nothing around, no shape apparent. He closed his eyes and covered them with an arm, then blinked until the room appeared itself in front of him, until colours dyed his surroundings.

The green lightings bounced off the windows, unable to pass through the charm; they fell apart in weightless sparks that faded slowly in the air.

He looked around. The image of Granger lying, upside down on the floor, his wand abandoned in the floor… it filled his gaze, expanded inside his eyes, like a silent scream. It was Lily's death all over again, the same death that had ripped Lily away from him; that death was throwing Granger at him cynically, like retaliating, laughing at his panicked face, hidden in the room's shadow.

His mind wasn't working, his attempts at explain himself what had happened sinking in clumsily, wrecking like ships too frail, too destroyed.

He frantically shook the girl's hand, which fell to the floor as soon as he let go, making a slight noise when it smashed the ground, a noise that got embedded painfully in Snape's brain, like a nail sinking in his consciousness.

The lights outside had diminished slowly until they disappeared.

What did he have in front of him? Was Granger dead?

He didn't know what happened to him; suddenly he had her in his arms and he was yelling and shaking her like a lifeless, grim doll. The brown curls slipped from his hands like a never-ending waterfall. He left her on the floor slowly, understanding that it was all his fault, if he had been more carefully… if he had anticipated what was to come…

He took her pulse with painful anticipation; air returned to his body when he felt between his fingers the continuous throb of Granger's vein.

At least he wouldn't have to carry another death.

He lifted her from the floor, his strength was barely enough, and his legs trembled, threatening to fail and let him fall with the girl he was carrying. He managed to roughly put her on the bed before his vigour left him completely.

He looked through the vials of potions, if he could create the right liquid, he'd be capable of healing Granger even before she opened her eyes, but without an ingredient in hand, he'd have to stick with what was available.

* * *

_Granger's clothes stain red, the sheets are getting soaked too._

_But she'll survive, the worst damage is in her shoulder._

_I'm such a stupid, reckless_— _so stupid. Of course she'd interfere, of course she'd get hurt, but I didn't even notice her presence._

_If something happens to Granger, I'll be the only one responsible, everyone will look at me darkly, even darker if that's possible. I'm not going to carry anyone else's death, no one's._

_I can handle Granger, she'll need to be taken care of, I have enough strength for that, I'll make her come unscathed from this, there'll be plenty of time to die later, now I'll have to take care of her. I have to give her back to that useless Potter._

_I thought nothing else could hurt me. That it didn't matter what they did to me. What else could they take away from me? Not even my life is that important to me._

_When Dumbledore asked me to kill him, I knew I wouldn't be able to save myself, I knew I wouldn't survive. Since then I've thought of myself as a mere force following Dumbledore's orders. And I left my identity as a person. Severus Snape didn't matter anymore, only the spy did and what he had to do. I had already dismissed my wishes, my own life._

_There is nothing else they can't take away from me. A puppet doesn't have anything to be taken away._

_But I was wrong, there's something else they can take away: my atonement._

_I'm finally free of my debts, I've paid them. If Granger dies, then would I have to start all over again? I don't have anything I had in the past, neither the youth, the will nor any goals. It's not time to start an exodus to redeem myself._

_If something happens to her, not even my life will be enough to compensate hers, it's clear they're not worth the same._

_Granger has to leave this place alive._

* * *

Someone lifted her head, fingers tangled in the dark mess that was her hair. Her shoulder burnt, she had this frantic urge to scratch it, to remove from her skin the sting it had attached. Her body barely moved, as if her brain's signals took longer to get there or barely arrived, causing her stiff muscles to make only erratic, weak movements.

And her shoulder burnt, so much she couldn't think of anything else.

A yellow light managed to pass through her half-closed eyes, the gigantic stain of colours and shapes was contouring, the white drop in front of her turning clear; suddenly there was a nose in front of her, a mouth.

The stain turned out to be the face of a black-eyed man, and Hermione started to remember some things: the glass on the floor, the bare, bloody feet walking on them, the explosions beside the window.

A fluid of sharp sweetness infested her throat with its taste, its thick texture. The hand on her nape lowered her until it put her head on something fluffy and soft.

The man watched her carefully, with the expression of a muggle doctor she found strange.

"They're gone? Everything is fine?"

_Everything but you, Granger._

The girl missed the sound of voices; the room was filled in typical silence, interrupted by some city's sounds, the sing-song of birds, distant buses… but she hadn't heard anyone talking for several days, except for that mental voice that didn't fill her ears.

"It's daytime already."

_You were unconscious for two._

"Two days unconscious?!"

_It's not that bad; now you see you're not indispensable, I've handled myself quite well. You better not get close to that bloody window if they attack us again._

"You were the one standing up there," she chided him, hardening her expression.

_You didn't have to follow me. Are you stupid, girl, incapable of knowing what's good for you?_

"And if something happens to you, what am I going to tell Harry?"

_Whatever happens to me isn't that good-for-nothing's business. And I don't care what Potter thinks about you._

The man turned her back on her and got out of the room, supporting himself on his broom. She heard his slow steps and the bangs of wood against wood that were caused by the Potion Master climbing down the stairs.

She looked around; the bureau was filled with vials, healing potions and bandages. She found the reason why she couldn't scratch: her shoulder was covered and immobilized by a thick gauze. She barely felt any pain, just a trail of small stabs, like the biting of shapeless bugs. But the itching was exasperating.

Snape went up with the same slowness he had used to go down; the girl heard him getting close, saw him cross the threshold, stumbling a bit, with a hand on the cane and another holding a deep plate.

She felt his weight when he sat on the edge of the bed, right beside her. She peered to see what was on the plate: some kind of soup or cream. It smelled good; her stomach started to make noises at the smell of food. Snape filled a spoon and presented it to her, as she had tried to do with him days before.

"Who cooked this?"

_Surely not you, Granger._

Hermione shifted, uncomfortable and surprised. She never thought Snape would end up feeding her and didn't like the idea.

"Let me eat on my own."

_The soup will spill. Stop bothering me and open your mouth, don't think I like this either._

The man's sullen face spoke by itself. Hermione moved her head forward and opened her mouth, but closed it again immediately, watching the spoon floating in front of her eyes, remembering the many times the Occlumens had thrown the food to the floor in the rudest, disdainful way. Snape seemed to sense her intentions when he saw her eyes fixed on the food.

_Don't even think about it, Granger, or I'll empty this plate right over your head._

Hermione grimaced, outraged; she thought him capable of fulfilling his threat. She started to eat meekly; the man sunk the spoon and turned it back to the girl with patience, but with a persistent frown of annoyance.

At that moment Hermione managed to understand some of his attitudes; it was uncomfortable and humiliating to depend on someone who didn't even like you. Although she never made any mocking faces while she took care of him.

No, but maybe Snape detected her implicit reject on her efforts to avoid touching him as much

She couldn't help but feel a breeze of guilt when she looked at the focused, frowning face in front of her. The plate of soup was almost empty. Hermione felt in her stomach a nice, warm weight. The food had replenished her strength and mood a little bit.

The man put the plate on the bureau and watched her expectantly, brows raised, almost ironic.

_So, Granger?_

"So what, professor?"

_What do you say, Granger? Do I have to teach you manners?_

Hermione smiled lightly, for a second he had reminded her of her father. After all, they were almost the same age.

"Thank you."

* * *

She recognised Snape's hands on her bare shoulder, on the blackened hole that green bolt had opened in her. Weirdly, although the wound looked quite painful, she didn't experience that sensation, only a stunning, annoying numbness. She could barely feel the man's finger, even though they were firmly squeezing the wound, applying a balm of awful, sharp smell that she didn't remember having in her first-aid kit.

She stood very still, a bit uncomfortable by his teacher's closeness, who just looked at the wound, trying very hard to ignore her.

"We have to inform the Ministry we were attacked. Haven't Orestes come back?"

"They hadn't sent that owl in th—three days, Granger…"

_How do you want me to inform the Ministry?_

He suddenly changed to occlumency when his voice became a silent thread of air.

"That cannot be, professor. Why would they stop sending Orestes? They're very interested in what'll happen with you, it'd be—"

"They hadn't sent him."

_It's that simple, they hadn't sent him, and we can't go out asking for help, me because of the spell and you because of your injuries, without mentioning the Death Eaters could still be waiting for you outside._

Granger looked out of the window as if she expected that some image from far away turned Snape's words into lies.

_Don't bother arguing with me, Granger._

He put clean bandages on her with care, going from her left shoulder to the armpit of her right arm.

_I've even done magic with your wand, despite the fact that I'm not allowed to, and not even that made them come here or send some message._

The girl looked at him, surprised, leaning back on the pillows that smelled of herbs she knew very well; she recognized them, it was the smell of the potion's lab, Snape's smell, who, despite being so far away from it for so long, still held that essence of fumes and smoke.

* * *

_I miss you, Ron._

_I couldn't read your last letter, maybe by now you've already written another one, maybe you're wondering why I haven't answered back._

_I wish I could send this somehow, but like this, from here…_

_I love you, Ron; I think about you every day and about that kiss I gave you. I wish I could be with you and have that hopeful blue (it was always like that to me) you carry in your eyes._

_I wonder how'd you fare if you were in my shoes, trapped here with Snape, you know? We had him so close since we were so small, and I feel like I don't know him at all. Sometimes he looks at the window with this bare face, with detachment and emptiness, like an orphaned child, and I don't recognize him, Ron. I'm afraid of Snape, of what Snape might be. Could you imagine that, Ron? What if he's nothing we thought he was? What if we're the ones who were always wrong, all this time? I think that might be the case because Harry seems to feel very guilty. I'm sorry for rambling, I was talking about Snape before._

_You know him, you know how rude he can be and the taste he has for insulting and belittling everyone around him, he had been like that to me until a few days ago, but I had a little accident (you don't have to worry about it). Since then things have turned weird: he makes food, not bad by the way, he does what he can to keep the house clean, although he generally steals my wand to do those chores. Anyway, he has taken care of me; he isn't nice, but he insults me less and he's a bit considerate, not a common trait in him._

_That has made me think._

_I think Snape is at his best when he's needed, you know, Ron? Every day I believe less and less of his guilt. I don't know, maybe it's all in my head, but I always told you, remember? That there was something in him, something I can't label, like a subliminal message, that he's not what he looks like. When Harry told us in our first year what Voldemort had told him about Snape, I decided to believe in him, that if Dumbledore had such high regard for him, there must've been some reason, something very valuable must have been inside that acerbic, sullen man. Maybe I have to believe in Harry and push away the registrar's theory about his faked memories._

_You know, there's always something in Snape's face that disturbs me, his eyes are darkened by a frown almost all the time. I'm worried about that, about the darkness, the cloak of shadows that don't let me see him clearly, which hides over and over again his expression._

_Who is Snape, Ron? Who is the man I'm trapped with?_

* * *

The man was uttering a series of spells; around him a broom and a wet mop were dragging themselves one the ground, cleaning the room's floor. Hermione remembered the child's movies where wizards did everything that way. It was a bit weird and strange, the erratic thump of the broom that moved frantically against the floor. Snape held her wand weakly, almost letting it fall from his fingers. He watched the cleaning meterial's movement with boredom.

The girl reached her storybook with her good hand. She opened one page randomly where the handsome, blonde prince watched the witch, small and miserable, which begged him for a night sheltered from the cold in his gigantic castle.

The man looked at the image from the corner of his eye, the feminine unfolding of the waves in the drawing.

"Children's stories again, Granger."

Hermione nodded, a bit surprised by his constant, hoarse words.

Snape watched the page with cold scrutiny, without stopping the wand's movement sloppily. He got up suddenly and walked with his cane clumsily, with slow footsteps. He put her wand on the bureau and went downstairs without saying a word, making the wood screech.

Granger skipped through the book, the yellow pages moving one by one, with their big, embellished print. The prince, the beast, the beauty, the witch. She read for a long time, thinking about Bella's confinement, about that gloomy, abandoned castle, all dusty. The beast couldn't have been a great company, away from her, watching the flower wither.

That flower…

She also felt compassion for the big beast, imagining him in front of his rose, surrounding it with his claws; with such rough, fiery hands, he'd destroy it in a second.

What hope did that creature had, of Bella loving him?

She sighed, thinking about how she'd never turn someone into a being like that.

* * *

She sensed the stumbling frame of the man climbing upstairs to the second floor. Snape was carrying in his hand a deep plate just like the one before. He sat on the edge of the bed with the same distant parsimony and extended a spoon full of the liquid he'd just cooked, without looking at her, focused only on the food. Hermione opened her mouth, tasting the food that soaked her tongue, warm and thick. She ate with greed but blushing when she noticed Snape's raised brow, who was glancing at her.

"It's really good," she said, trying to smile, which burned before completely showing itself.

_I can see that, Granger._

Hermione finished the whole plate. Snape left it on the bureau and made her drink a potion for the pain.

"Will the vials be enough for both, professor? I remember there weren't many left," the man threw the empty bottle to the trash can with an accuracy that made Granger smile. Ron always got the things in the bins too, Harry on the other hand never managed to basket anything.

"Professor Snape, you haven't—"

_There are five bottles left._

Brown eyes followed him, insistent.

"You should ration them more, sir. They won't be enough for both of us now that—"

"Silence," the deep voice cut her in, leaving her with her mouth open.

_I know you have the habit of ordering people around and stating the obvious, but don't come and lecture me as if I was Potter. I know what I'm doing, unlike your little friends._

He took the plate roughly and went out with his cane. Hermione didn't see him for the rest of the afternoon; Snape had the habit of leaving her alone for many hours and only went back to change her bandages, feed her and cure her. The rest of the day he ignored her relentlessly.

* * *

_Granger had been sleeping in the room adjacent to mine when I was prostrated. I always thought the room was furnished just like mine, that it'd have a bed, bureaus, maybe even a table or a closet, until now that I can see it._

_There was only an old carpet, with a faded print of yellow flowers._

_Granger had been sleeping on the floor all this time. Granger took care of me, watched over me, feed me. She did it without even believing in me. Gryffindors are so irritating, their abnegating hero's attitude annoys me, they pretend to be nobler than what they truly are._

_Granger was always a fake, prudish know-it-all, spending all her time pretending to be the good girl, the prim one, the pristine one. She even tried to create that absurd organization for the elves' defence. Of course, Granger the saviour of every injured being, justice's protector…_

_I never believed in Granger, and insulting her was one of the things I enjoyed the most when I taught her potions. For me, Granger was all show. I was comfortable assuming she was a hypocrite._

_Until what happened in front of that window._

_She wouldn't have risked her own life had she been the girl I thought she was; she turned out to be more than a big mouth._

_But she irritates me. So, she's capable of risking herself for someone she doesn't care about. She's definitely doing it for Potter._

_It annoys me to see that Gryffindors truly are what they say they're on occasions._

_I hate Gryffindors._

* * *

Hermione shifted in the sheets, constantly looking at the man standing in the threshold. She hadn't taken a shower in four days ago and that fact was making her uncomfortable, but when she tried to ask Snape for help, she blushed before even managing to say a word.

"Professor."

The Potion Master slowly turned his head towards her, without fully looking at her.

"I haven't taken a shower in days and it's a bit—"

Given the expression of annoyance the man bore, she decided to kept silence for a few seconds, and then continue talking.

"Please, just help me reach the bathroom. I can do… the rest myself."

She saw with surprise as the man pointed her with the wand and levitated her. Hermione wiggled in the air, scared of falling, of looking at the floor. When the man started to move her through the door and to the hallway, the girl felt a wave of dizziness as she saw the stairs and first floor.

"Professor!" she yelled with barely contained fright, shaking her legs and holding her injured arm.

_Stop moving, Granger._

Snape walked behind her, very slowly. One of his hands leaning on the wall helped him stay upright, and the man walked with an elegant, silent delay.

They reached the bathroom on the other side of the hallway. The door opened by itself violently and Hermione flew until she stood under the shower, holding her good arm against the tiled, beige wall. Snape was entering the bathroom, dragging with him a barrel which he turned upside down when he got inside, in that tiny space to shower. He pointed the barrel he had turned as a seat.

"Sit there," and then he gave Hermione the wand.

_Use it to whatever you need and shower sitting down; it'd be really problematic if you slipped with that plastered arm._

The girl caressed unconsciously the sling Snape had made her, looking with some alarm how the man crossed the threshold, going to the hallway, supporting himself against the walls.

* * *

_Lily._

_Did you even have any idea of what you were to me? I want to tell you:_

_You were my humanity._

_That's why I had to do what I did. What did I had left apart from that? My life, apart from you, doesn't have any reason at all._

_I find loneliness to be unbearable, sometimes I can't believe I spent so much time locked in those dungeons, just talking to Albus (exchanging curses doesn't count)._

_What did I have apart from you, Lily?_

_You are my only constant, or were._

_I sit on the stairs of the house and look around me, then I realize I'm living something that's not mine. Every single person of our generation is dead. Why am I the only survivor, when I should have been the first to disappear?_

_I should've died in that bloody tree, to Potter's dismay, who would've been expelled and wouldn't have married you._

_You wouldn't hate me; on the contrary, you'd be able to think about me fondly and with some pain._

_It's not like I meant you any harm, Lily, but I'd like my memory to cause you that feeling of having a thorn inside you chest, of suddenly be left breathless. I wish you could remember me with a small part of the pain I feel when I remember you, and not with the cold indifference and neglect you sure feel when you think about me._

_Anyway, with the years I've learnt that the course of our lives isn't determined by anything else but small situations that rise and somehow shape a bigger, more random event._

_For example, if I had reached your house on time, maybe you'd have been able to run, and Voldemort would've killed me instead of you. Do you know why I wasn't on time, Lily? I wasn't able to find your house in that muggle place which was unknown to me; darkness and adrenaline didn't help me. What a stupid reason to have failed you, right, Lily?_

_Nothing is meaningful to me anymore, almost everything is insufferable to me, even the birds' singing in the morning. If Granger didn't restrict so much my use of her wand, I'd roast them right over the branch they stand on._

_I'll have to bear this for a little longer, while I manage to get Granger out of here._


	10. Under the Bed

**Disclaimer**: I own nothing of this. This chapter was hard to translate, so I apologise in advance for any mistake.

* * *

**10\. Under the Bed**

Hermione dreamed. She dreamed of an Animagus that turned into a crow, looking up from some surreal building, from the street of a dream city; she saw how the man was shifting into a different shape, how, from his bare, smooth shoulders, black and big wings were emerging, which swallowed him, which plunged him into a feathery cocoon and then the man was no longer a man, but a dark bird.

It was a fascinating, strange dream, irreverently interrupted by arms that squeezed her. It was almost as if the Animagus from her dreams had left her mind and held her with his arms turned into wings.

She turned her head, still confused, between the threshold of wakefulness and oblivion. She saw a white forehead followed by a prominent nose, like a toucan's beak.

_Keep quiet, Granger._

Green explosions failed against the protection she had set days before. The room was lightened up completely for a few moments, afterwards darkening again.

The arms pulled her downwards. Breath caressed her nape. Snape dragged her from behind until they were under the bed, where they hid from the tribe of white masks, like two scared children.

The Death Eaters not only sent hexes but also stones to the windows; a big ruckus was coming from downstairs, someone was having a Herculean fight with the door, protected by spells which kept them away.

_And if they open it?_, Hermione thought, shaken by such violent, loud noises.

Both of them were injured and there was only one wand.

Snape was lying upside down beside her; the lightning from outside reflecting on his fixed, careful eyes.

"Where's the wand?"

_In my hand._

At that moment, his coal gaze seemed ablaze from inside.

"They're here to kill you."

_They know I betrayed them._

The man simply said. But for Hermione, it was more than a mere sentence. Snape, without realizing, had confessed again.

"You betrayed them?" she repeated quietly, watching the man's eyes going back to her, big and lively; something was moving inside so much black.

_This isn't the time for interrogatories, Granger; get your head down, if you don't want them to know where we are!_

* * *

They spent many nights where hiding under the mattress and trying to reinforce the protective spell was the best they could do. After some time, Hermione wanted to use charms that hid the house from any stranger's gaze, but Snape warned her it'd be useless, given that the Death Eaters followed him by the tattoo on his forearm, which hadn't faded away yet.

They had been sleeping in the same room because there wasn't any other place to hide at night in the other.

* * *

They were under the bed; Snape had put during daytime a big quilt that covered the gap between the platform and the floor.

Again they heard each other breathing in the middle of their silent bubble under the bed, of hidden glances, a bit complicit. Somehow there was a lot of intimacy down there, laying down one beside the other, holding their breath, snoozing sometimes, while the noises and explosions outside returned to their daily fight against the house's charms.

Hermione opened her eyes, almost useless in the dim light; beside her, the man was lying face down, with her wand between his fingers. He had fallen asleep with his head against the cold, hardwood of the floor.

He had already confessed to her twice that Harry was telling the truth.

And Hermione began to feel horror. Dumbledore was capable of putting someone in such an impossible situation, in that point of harshness and sacrifice. Maybe that was why the director had wanted to save him and somehow save himself too, because Dumbledore's figure also irrevocably darkened under everyone's eyes when it was revealed what he had done with his servant's life.

Only then she understood Harry's confusion, anger and resentment when he had just found out about Arianna and Grindelwald.

She lowered her chin until it reached the floor, looking from under the quilt how the bolts kept smashing against the wall, lighting up the window, like constant, relentless rain. Like the announcement of a storm that never came.

Had he defected? Why was nobody helping them? Why didn't they send them owls, potions, something?

It was like, deep down, they wanted them to be killed.

For him to be killed.

She was just an unlucky woman.

* * *

Healing day.

The ridiculous, untimely irony that both of them were hurt made everything worse.

Snape carried the few vials they had left while supporting himself with the other arm on his broom. She had a few gauzes on her good arm and both were sitting on each side of the bed to start healing each other. The idea had been Granger's; Snape hadn't been willing to cooperate, he said it was stupid and it sounded like a joke. When she saw herself in front of the Potion Master, one with cotton in hand and the other with a vial, she started to think the man was right.

"Ladies first, Granger," he said smoothly while his pale, bony hands reached the girl's bandage and ripped it with careful slowness.

The wound was a bruised hole on her skin; the half-blood's hand surrounded it with wet cotton, tracing small, careful circles around it. Then he gave her a pain potion to drink and kept on walking around the room, distant and pacific, moistening rags, throwing away dirty gauzes. Everything always in order, every action executed with the most controlled caution. When he finished he walked over again, with short, light footsteps, as if he was used to walking over fog or thin ice.

Hermione, a bit impressed by his teacher's actions, felt that constant drive to impress her professors. She took the bandage from the man's neck very slowly. Uncovering the wet, transparent skin, the weird smell coming from the wound, the scent of old blood. Snape waited with his head thrown back and his chest full of air. His long neck stretched under Hermione's finger. The man exhaled, completely silent. Granger watched as his eyelids fluttered lightly. And, for a disturbing second, she was aware for the first time that her professor was a man and that she was a woman. Not that the fact had any importance, she was just unable to stop thinking about how strange and awkward it was, about the fact that if Snape were younger or she older, people could whisper and picture things; maybe they did, despite the insurmountable age gap between them. At least she had the reassurance that anyone who knew her just a bit would throw apart that idea immediately.

"Wh—when are you—?" the voice drowned in a murky babbling; the pale head wasn't thrown backwards anymore. Snape watched at her, serious and annoyed.

_What has you distracted, Granger? I don't want to stay like this all day until you finally deign to help me._

"I'm sorry," she mumbled, taking her finger to the aristocratic, long neck, to the engrossed touch of the perfect veins, the fright of the red, bright scar, the infamous clefts. Grotesque, for invading a skin once pristine.

* * *

In a moment of coincidences, their gazes locked under the bed, protected by a worn platform and a distasteful quilt.

They didn't have anything to be looking at. Snape had lost his youth and he was ugly. Granger, on her part, wasn't particularly attractive, and she also had stopped brushing her hair because of her wounded arm.

But they were looking at each other, maybe because they didn't have anything else to do besides noticing the weird situation they were in, facing each other under a mattress in the middle of a lightning storm, impotent but still fierce, fighting against their window.

They hadn't dined much, because the food was scarce, and the Ministry hadn't sent more.

"It's better to be a little hungry today than having an empty stomach tomorrow," Granger had announced like a consummate housewife.

The bolts still bounced against the window; someone was fighting again against the front door. The usual fear of the lock and charms failing always took their slumber away.

So they were looking at each other.

The first time it had been brief and annoying (their pupils repelled each other just like magnets with the same polarity). Granger always ended up asking something to save herself. But, with time, the toothy girl got tired of being humiliated under the crushing glances of her professor and took it as a personal challenge to not avert her eyes and left the silence untouched, running between the two.

Then they started to engross themselves in silent, subtle wars, of watching and not watching each other, of concentrating in their eyes the deepness and intense electric shocks of their minds. The goal was to simply avoid being weak in front of their rival.

Despite everything, Snape won frequently, although Granger could congratulate herself a few times, when she sensed him averting his eyes slowly, like one who lays down his king in a chess game.

She liked that; it made her feel tickles in the corner of her mouth.

* * *

_Snape is eating in front of me, he hasn't said anything nor glanced here, as usual._

_In class he talked a lot, it looked like he enjoyed it (of course, to our dismay). But he seldom talks to me; sometimes I like it that way, but the days pass without hearing a single voice other than my own. I speak a bit just to hear myself, so everything is not so quiet._

_I miss hearing you a lot, Ron._

_Ron, Ron, Ron._

_Your name sounds good when repeated; I like to call for you when I'm under the warm spray of water of the shower and when I look out the window and when I look at my sling._

_And I want so much to read a book beside the storybook. Although I know you wouldn't share that urge._

_It's stupid and impractical to write letters no one is going to read. But, what else can I do alone in this house? At least when I write time passes quickly and doesn't go away in vain; at least, at the end of the day I can say I have three more pages than the day before. It's not much, but it's something._

_He's looking at me right now__, he's probably wondering what I'm writing. He's wearing a brown shirt; in fact, it's the only clothing he has, and the pants he's wearing. Maybe I should transfigurate some of my clothes so he can wear it, make them bigger, change their colour and shape. It would be good to transfigurate him into you or Harry. I smiled at that thought and now he's looking at me closely, maybe he knows what I'm thinking about, his eyes sharpen, and his nose seems bigger. I don't know why, but when I look at him like that, with the spoon so close to his mouth and watching me sullenly, he reminds me of a crow._

_Yours, Hermione J. Granger._

* * *

The man was washing his only clothes, wearing his Azkaban's robes; he had this big grimace of blunt distaste. The girl was pointing at the roof with her wand, trying to close the gaps of the half-destroyed roof, where rain slipped in. The storm of the day before had flooded them. The girl went on drying the puddles on the ground with magic, but the man had to do the manual labour, given there weren't wands for both.

Snape walked to the middle of the living room, forearms wet. His clothes were already drying under the sunlight. Granger noted with some amusement and pity how his Azkaban's clothes were looser than the previous times she had seen him wearing them, and the professor seemed like he was covered by a gigantic, striped pyjama.

His appearance would've been hilarious if it weren't for his gloomy, aggressive face. He had the demeanour of a disturbed, dangerous criminal.

_How's the roof going, Granger?_

Several pieces of wood floated in circles around the hole, filling it, taking slowly their place, like a jigsaw.

"Looks good, it'll be ready by today."

_What an amazing feat._

He raised his brows with scepticism and turned to the garden to watch the clothes rocking on the dryer; he seemed to think the clothes wouldn't dry as they should if he wasn't there to watch them.

Granger realized he was just looking for an excuse to be away from her.

* * *

_I woke up with Granger yelling against my ear and pulling me desperately with her healthy arm; she was trying to drag me under the bed. The hexes against the window were already part of our daily routine, I don't know why she expected them to let us sleep in peace for one night._

_It was as if someone was screeching in my head, like a sharp croak of a bird that wouldn't shut up. The bloody migraine and fever were back._

_We had already run out of potions for pain and fever. Granger needed them and there wasn't any way of rationing them anymore._

_The darkness turned thicker because of my pained eyes. I felt my whole body hot, face flushed with temperature, stomach revolved and, worst of all, the pain of the bite waking up, shifting and sinking in me, like a long, long needle._

_I knew Granger was looking at me, she was worried, she gets worried over anything._

_Her thin voice talked to me constantly, I didn't understand anything she said. I could only understand the dialogue of her big eyes, floating amid genuine, growing concern._

_She talked some more and grabbed me by the shoulders; I could just see her mouth open and close, becoming a gigantic pit when she got closer._

_I vaguely felt her moving beside me, like a dark lump. She held my head with one hand, I still remember the fluttering sensation of her fingers on my nape, lost in my hair. And she kept on talking; why did Granger never shut her mouth? My neck hurt, my shoulder, everything. A pain impossible to sleep with, which expanded… and stupid Granger couldn't shut up._

_The face of my former student lost clarity and transformed itself into a blur with a mouth. Her mouth was always the last thing to disappear when Granger was concerned. I still felt her fingers squeezing my nape; I started to think very slowly, someone was pulling my hair a bit, I assumed it was her and her big mouth and small fingers…_

* * *

When he opened his eyes again, he noticed dawn was close; the sky was painted grey and some ashen light got into the room.

He guessed he had lost consciousness, and yet the pain never left at any point of the night. It was present in his dreams, reminding him something was waiting for him beyond his phantasmagorias.

Granger was next to him, looking through the vials on the bureau with just one hand. She took one quickly, tried to read the label, put it back in its place and then took another. Next to the bed was a big basin full of water and floating gauzes inside. The girl was fighting against the coagulant's vial, unable to open it with just one hand.

"Gr... Gran—" nothing else left his mouth. His throat burned, completely dried up.

As soon as Granger heard him, she removed the basin from the chair clumsily and sat on it. She took away from Snape a rag she'd put on his neck. The man felt an uncanny coolness. His wound was completely uncovered. Granger took one of the wet gauzes from the basin and put it on his neck. The wet rag made a _plaff _when it hit his skin. Humidity and beads of water licking the cuts gave him some comfort; the pain was more bearable.

"You've been sick all night."

Her good hand pressed the wound, trying to lightly massage him. Snape twisted when she made contact and screamed with that stubble of voice he had left, but Hermione kept trying and, after a few moments, her touch turned from agonizing to calming.

The man wasn't going to say it, but on the inside, he was glad there was a hand to calm his pain. Really glad, actually; it had been several years since someone had tried to help him. He tried to calm his breathing down and focus on the soft, slow fingers roaming his neck. If he focused on them and her movements, he'd be able to occlude the pain.

_Talk to me about something, Granger._

Black eyes followed her with that constant, empty gaze.

"I'm sorry?"

_Talk to me, I have to distract myself._

Hermione understood he meant to distract himself from his neck wound. The man had relapsed, he had a fever and intense pain, and she had stayed under the bed with him until the Death Eater left. Then, using her wand, she'd been able to put him on the bed, seeing him moan and shake for a long time. She looked for fever and pain potions, but she discovered after her desperate search they'd already used them all.

And the Ministry hadn't reached yet.

She felt with her fingertips the man's pulse, noticing when he swallowed and, above all, perceiving the tightening of the muscles and skin, the sharp shaking coming from the wound.

She began telling him about what it meant to be a dentist and everyone's fear of going to fix their teeth. Snape didn't seem too pleased by the subject, but he made an effort to focus on the conversation and drive away the sensations born in his destroyed trachea.

* * *

Hermione never stopped being surprised by Snape's volatility; one day he seemed sick and weak and the next one he didn't even break a sweat.

Three days had passed when she only met him when the moment to hide under the bed came; she heard him walking downstairs, like a caged lion, and she felt insanely curious, but when she went down to see what things Snape could be doing, she simply found him standing on the final step of the stairs, pensive. The man watched her with some annoyance. It was clear he didn't want her company. Then Hermione went back up, without daring to ask anything at all.

* * *

Hermione had mistakenly assumed that being alone with Snape meant she had to get to know him better somehow, that looking at him close and constantly would help her make a judgment about him.

However, she barely met him, she just stood outside his glass of silence, watching him as if she were on the other side of a glass.

What she had managed to discover were meaningless details.

For some reason it was hard for her to imagine professors as humans with lives apart from Hogwarts; sometimes it felt like they were part of the castle's furniture.

As time passed with her Defence's professor, she found herself in front of a strange, bizarre spectacle.

She found out what was Snape's appearance when he slept, how his face looked, on what position he slept… she could finally answer everyone's eternal question: did he wash his hair?

Rubbish, honestly; they made her curious, but outside those futilities, she still didn't know anything important about the man.

He managed to stay far away, walking surrounded by smoke and aphonia. His face didn't express anything. When Granger looked at him closely, she noticed the years had left a mark in him. When she'd met him in her first year his eyes had seemed livelier, bigger; he seemed energetic, always haughty and pedantic but active, passionate about bothering everyone and taking points, but passionate, nonetheless. He had lost that with time. He had turned more bitter, poisonous. His gaze seemed full of mist and ashes, he always seemed vaguely tired, apathetic to anything surrounding him. To Hermione, it was enough to remember her first Potion's class and compare it to the image in front of her. The gap widened irrecoverably, too noticeable; something bad had happened to Snape during that time, maybe it was the fact that he got old… but that couldn't be all.

Granger found everyday reasons to believe in Harry's word.

She was always alert, but softened up slowly when she saw him multiply the scarce food they had left, when she realized he had spent all the analgesic potions on her instead of his own pain. A rotten person wouldn't do those things. He had killed Dumbledore, but Granger was starting to leave some space to wonder why. And she told herself she didn't have any right to judge him, she actually didn't know the reason for those actions. Black and white were dissipating in grey shadows, the duality of good and back blurring.

After all, who was she to condemn others?

* * *

Granger sat up on the bed. The curtains were closed, but she detected daylight behind the thick fabric hanging from the window. On the floor, next to the bed, neither the pillow nor the quilts which Snape used to cover them were there anymore. She could hear vague steps somewhere in the house.

She stood up hurriedly. The floor's soft, cold wood was pleasant under her bare feet. She went downstairs holding the railway with her good hand. To be in that state made her feel vulnerable many times, as there were several things she couldn't do on her own, not even brush her hair or put some socks, and she didn't dare to ask Snape for help, so she left her hair like a mess and went barefoot everywhere.

The man was standing up again next to the stairs, arms crossed, carrying her wand in one hand. He lorded over her as if she belonged to him.

"Good morning, Professor Snape," she greeted him without taking her eyes off her wand, wanting to imply her annoyance of getting constantly deprived of her wand without any warning.

Snape growled as a greeting and looked at her with sullen eyes, as if studying her messy hair.

_There's something I want you to see, Granger._

He communicated thoughtfully, without moving his gaze from her head.

He turned around pretentiously, walking to a cupboard they had under the stairs. Hermione followed him, noticing how narrow and rigid his shoulders were, the lack of ease of his movements.

The man opened the cupboard's room and gestured her to look inside.

Hermione hadn't imagined the house would have a room like that. The cupboard's space was bigger than she had thought; a charm gave the small room a warm, reddish light, and there wasn't any furniture, but the floor was carpeted and looked comfortable.

"Why do you think this room is here?"

_I created it, so we could hide here at night. I'm done with that ruckus and getting under that bloody bed._

"That's what you've been doing all these days?"

The girl's frizzy hair distracted him; he'd have gladly mocked her, but he couldn't find the right moment.

_What did you think I was doing? What's wrong with you these days, Granger? Too much_ _volume in that head and too little content?_

Hermione flushed and unconsciously touched her head.

"Well, I guess I'll bring our stuff here. Can I?" she extended her hand towards the man, intently. Snape stayed with his arms crossed. "My wand, professor."

_I'll do it. You go back and read the Stupid White._

"Snow White."

_Whatever. Go upstairs and stay out of the way, this wand is much more useful in my hands than in yours._

He pointed with a long, pale finger to Hermione's sling and turned around to the kitchen, without giving her the wand back.


	11. The Smoky Voice

**Disclaimer**: Everything belongs to Rowling and Gato Azul.

* * *

**11\. The Smoky Voice**

The room's light under the cupboard was made of bright, reddish dots, like fire fireflies, which travelled slowly around an invisible point in the air. Granger looked at them intently, wondering what kind of spell was that. The tiny room was full of a warmth the rest of the house lacked, and the carpet was simple and soft. She knew that outside her little world under the cupboard the hexes and bolts had already started their war dance, but the noises barely entered their atmosphere of silence and warmness.

The red fireflies spun in well-defined orbits, like lazy electrons.

"What charm is that, Professor Snape? I hadn't seen it before."

The lump laying down next to her made a dry, harsh noise. He turned around, entangled in many sheets, and looked at her with implicit mocking in his eyes.

_Something the wise Gryffindor doesn't know. It won't be me who rescue you from that inglorious ignorance, Granger._

He turned, leaving her again only with his back's view.

Outside, someone was fighting again against the kitchen door, like the nights before. And yet Hermione felt a bit more protected; they were in the middle of the house, a bit lower than the floor's level, in the safest place of the building. The floating light and the carpet's kind touch reminded her of home and her parents. She had the impression, maybe false but intense, that nobody could violate the little room's piece.

Snape curled casually, inhaling long and peacefully. Hermione didn't know him well enough, but she would have dared to say he was in a good mood.

* * *

She encountered the man during their walks around the house; she found him sipping water and looking through the window facing the yard, with the manner of those looking through time, backwards or forwards, never the image they had in front of them; always the depths of an intimate, distant mystery. His head rose to the clouded sky of the kitchen like a mountain sage, or like a lost castaway.

Or simply like a lonely, reclusive man who looked for himself in big skies.

She liked to spy on him when he meditated in front of the window. It was like seeing a part of him unknown to others.

Many times she wondered about what he was thinking while watching cloud's movements, but never dared to speak. It was Snape himself who broke those moments, with his deep voice, which Hermione hadn't heard for so long.

"I know you're there."

Granger jumped a bit, entrenched behind the wall. The man's head turned slowly towards her.

_You don't have anything else to do, Granger, besides standing there like an idiot?_

"I'm not an idiot, professor Snape," she told him seriously, looking at the floor and her bare feet. The man waited impatiently for the girl to raise her head to use Legilimency again, but she kept on looking at her feet, inert, with an attitude similar of a scolded child with a grave face.

"Lea—ve me… alo—ne," but his voice failed when it left his mouth.

Hermione raised her head.

"I'm not an idiot, but you're right, I don't have anything else to do. Although I think you don't either. There's nothing to do, no one to talk to besides you, and I thought, we could try to talk, about anything."

_Are you sure you want to share a nice conversation with me? Dumbledore's murderer?_

He raised his brows in a dramatic gesture of surprise.

"The reasons why you did it would be a good topic to start with," she answered without flinching, despite his towering scowl and tight lips.

_Just get out of my view, pretentious brat. I don't have to explain anything to you._

Hermione remained for a moment in her place, the only change in her was a slumped corner of her mouth. Snape had turned around, giving her his back, clearly implying he was to ignore her from that moment on.

"I don't want to fight with you, I just want to talk for a while, I haven't spoken to anyone in weeks."

The man didn't move nor made any noise. She knew he didn't want to hear her, she wasn't going to get any response, but nothing could stop her from talking to him, she'd let the words travel to him. It was always more humane to communicate with others, rather than to the mirror or the wall. Even if that other was Snape.

She told him what had happened the night Dumbledore was killed, she told him about Harry's reaction, the raised wands, the mortuary lights and the despair. The half-blood hadn't tried to leave, he was still standing in front of the window, like a dull sculpture. Hermione supposed he was listening to her, after all.

Then she told him about the details of their Horrocrux's hunt, the heaviness of carrying the locket, the grey thoughts lightening in their minds because of it, the fight with Ronald…

"We thought we'd never find anything, that maybe it'd be better to abandon the search and hide, at least I thought that," she shrugged, caressing her sling and raising her eyes to Snape's back, static.

"Harry said he saw a deer made of light and that she guided him to the sword; that night Ron came back with us and they were happy, finally someone was helping us, but I never knew who was that someone, I guess Harry's mother. It's incredible," she added, more to herself than the man who had turned his head a bit, like he wanted to look at her but couldn't

Her big, honest eyes met the Potion Master's hidden gaze. During her long monologue she'd felt many times it was stupid to talk to someone who closed their ears, that it'd be better to just leave, but she remained with the hope of sparking his interest and she had finally made it, her words reached him, her talk hadn't been in vain, finally.

_Why are you telling me this, Granger? You know what I did._

"Precisely because of that. Have you ever thought about someone else?" her words were chiding, but her expression was softened, and her voice sounded kind. Snape was confused for a moment. He was tired of accepting guilt that it wasn't even necessary to keep carrying anymore; he hadn't killed Albus by his own will and didn't have any reason to keep covering the old man and enduring the rebuffs of everyone around him. He had helped them in the lake, although they weren't wrong in a way when they said it had been Lily; she was the reason, he always acted on her name.

But not anymore; that long life in the Shrieking Shack, in Azkaban and now in that half-destroyed house didn't have anything to do with Lily, besides the fact he was Snape and was irrevocably infected of love for her. Nevertheless, there wasn't anything else to do to vent his storms of desperate adoration, the echoes of Lily's past had died down and he was lonelier and emptier than ever before.

There was nothing else to do for Lily, there wasn't any case in living for her anymore.

In short, there wasn't any case in living, or hiding things, or shutting up, or pretending. He could've told Granger everything: that he was the deer, that he loved Evans, that he wasn't a traitor. But he felt some pleasure when keeping quiet, when leaving everyone sinking on swampy doubt, confining them to unrest, resentment and confusion. When denying himself. To deny by sheer pride to bow before the Gryffindors and receive their claps and compassion and their bloody, hypocritical tears that wouldn't diminish any of his pains, nor his guilts. And that wouldn't placate the hatred and melancholy which were eating him alive daily.

Granger was still waiting behind his inner hurricane.

"What do you think about this, professor Snape?"

The man looked at her in silence, with owl's eyes, sharp and piercing.

But he never used Legilimency nor separated his lips; he watched her directly for an eternal minute, as if he could see many things besides her, but didn't answer and turned his back again.

"What is it that you don't want me to know? If you're guilty, why are you hiding? You weren't scared of killing Dumbledore in front of Harry, but you can't do something as simple as telling me? And if you're innocent, why do you keep quiet? Why don't you scream it so we leave you alone?"

The man turned around with parsimonious slowness. He didn't look so towering, dressed as a muggle. Not with that brown t-shirt that showed his thin, empty body.

_What's the difference? I don't care what you think of me; the trial will go on and none of your opinions will sway the registrar._

"How can you be so sure of that?" the witch spat, ego bruised.

_Isn't it obvious, Granger? If you_ _had any relevance in this, they wouldn't lock you here without sending food so you ended up dying with me, would they?_

The girl frowned, pensive and sulking.

_Then why would I talk to you? If I tell you I'm guilty you'll yell at me and slap me._

Granger flushed slightly, remembering her hand smashed against Snape's cheek.

_If I tell you I'm innocent, what could you give me? Your tears? Your ridiculous words of support? Or do I have to reveal my motives just to satisfy your pathological curiosity and overfeed pride? See your own stupidity, Granger._

Hermione bowed her head slowly; it was hard to swallow that, maybe for once, she couldn't do anything useful. And that Snape had good reasons for not wanting to speak to her.

Granger left without saying anything else, eyes lost and empty. Snape savoured the duality of satisfaction and bitterness his victory had given him. And he also wondered if it wouldn't be better to have the girl with wet cheeks in front of him, if her gaze full of admiration and respect wouldn't have been better. He'd have liked to humiliate her that way and rub in her face that she and her friends were alive only because he hid the sword.

But no. The only degraded person would be precisely him, because he didn't know if he'd be capable of enduring those piety gushes that he had yearned and despised at the same time since childhood.

Maybe he would have ended up kneeling in front of Granger, like a pious or redeemed man. He imagined her giving him mercy with her wounded arm and her messy hair.

No, never from that insufferable brat. He'd rather have a Dementor's kiss than a pity one from her.

* * *

Hermione heard man's quiet footsteps deep in the night, felt his body lay down close by, somewhere in the room. The firelights had faded away long and she had been dozing off. After their failed conversation she hadn't tried to talk to him for several days, thinking about the things the half-blood had spoken over and over again. She knew Snape had been right in a way, but after thinking about it for a long time she realized there was something left to say.

And she was planning to open up that night.

With eagerness, she peeped as the Potion Master took his shoes off and extended a sheet over himself.

"Goodnight, Professor Snape."

The Legilimens arched a brow, feeling surprised she still dared to address him.

"Did you eat anything?"

_Afraid I'm not following your rationing dictatorship?_

"I'm afraid you're not eating anything at all," the man grimaced, wrinkling his nose like a dog showing its fangs.

"I want to answer your question."

_I don't remember having asked you anything, Granger._

He sat up, supporting himself on his skinny elbows. His hair was ruffled after rubbing his head against the pillow; Hermione drowned the smile stinging her lips. Snape seemed serious and solemn, but his irreverent strand of hair betrayed him.

"You asked what would you gain by talking to me."

_You don't have to answer every question you hear, Granger. When are you going to get it?_

He rolled his eyes, annoyed by a sudden thought.

_I hope you don't plan on answering that too._

The wounded girl watched him from her nest of quilts, caressing her sling without noticing.

"I want to know because maybe if you were forced to… to do what you did, then I'm mistreating you. I need to know, professor; I can't be the same with one or another. I slapped you without knowing anything, and what if you're innocent? I don't want you to tell me just because of me; I want you to tell me so I can treat you fairly."

_You have been thinking, Granger. I don't care how you treat me._

Hermione watched him stunned and speechless, without moving.

_Does your ego make you think I care what you may say to me? That when you insult me I can't sleep at night? Don't be absurd._

He threw himself on the sheets and turned around gracelessly. Granger spent a long time musing before she was able to sleep and told herself that trying to get the truth out of Snape was only for the insane or idealists. Or maybe it was that everything was so obvious, it'd have been an insult to say it directly. Something in Snape's attitude gave him an aura of a martyr, of paying for things he shouldn't. His eyes were dull, as if covered by a wall of dirt; there was something dull in his gaze, which was once vitriolic, as if nothing else mattered, as if nothing else were enough.

It was precisely his eyes, his tired old man's gaze, that made her doubt. That startled her.

* * *

They had multiplied the food so many times it wasn't possible to keep doing so, the real thing had worn down and they wouldn't be able to multiply a bread which was the result of a bread that was also the product of another multiplication.

Granger calculated that the rations they'd left would last for a week if they just ate two crackers and drank a cup of coffee once a day, and she was left speechless, watching how little they had, wondering desperately and with a touch of ire: where were Harry, Ron, McGonagall? The names kept parading her mind, and none gave her any comfort.

Snape ate his two crackers slowly, breaking them with his bony, long fingers. Hermione watched him prepare himself a colourless coffee with a resignation that sometimes bothered her; she couldn't be so calm in the face of hunger, and every day her rage against Harry and Ron grew. Although, after thinking about it and cheering herself, she told herself there must've been something preventing them from helping, that maybe the Ministry hadn't said anything and they lived in peaceful ignorance, thinking everything was fine.

Thinking about that calmed her anger, but increased her anguish.

* * *

_Ron,_

_I need you, why can't you hear me? Why don't you suspect something is wrong? Why don't you suspect, you or Harry or McGonagall, or even Luna that always thinks she sees things that aren't real? Why doesn't she feel what's happening?_

_There's almost nothing left to eat. What's going to happen when everything is gone? When this pack of cracker stop separating us from the future and we'd be confined, without anything to eat. What are we going to do, Ron?_

_We were like that once, us and Harry. But we could go out to the woods and look for mushrooms and plants. But in this house, Ron, what are we going to find in this house?_

_Sometimes I think we're going to end up hunting rats._

_I wish I could hear from you, see the blue and green sparks of your eyes, listen to your jokes. I wish you could suspect I'm here, Ron, waiting for you._

_I love you, miss you and need you, H J Granger._

* * *

She pushed the door to the little room under the stairs. The reddish, dim star was still on, floating in the middle of the room. She distinguished a frame drew between the sheets. Snape had gone to sleep before her, a very unusual act from his part. Hermione sat carefully, without making any noise. The Potion Master was weirdly laying face up; he always took care of turning his back on her or hiding his face, annoyed by the idea of being watched while asleep. But that day, weariness had gotten him without warning.

Granger's stomach started a revolution, crying for food; at least she could comfort herself on the fact that she hadn't eaten her ration yet and she could fool her hunger with her two crackers. She pulled them out of the small package that was over an improvised shelf and watched them, knowing that by eating them, one more day of hope died. Less food, less time, fewer chances of being rescued.

She cracked the biscuit by half, to delay the eating and deceive her stomach. Snape shifted, breathing heavily and putting his pale hand somewhere over his belly, going back to his stillness again. Hermione could hear his professor's stomach growling, even while he was asleep.

She looked at her cracker again, with airs of weakness, remembering the old times when she'd sit on the table in the Great Hall and there were many plates to choose, cakes, turkey, beverages; she could almost feel the tasty smell of buns under her nose.

The Prince turned lazily, entangling his legs with the sheets. Hermione could see his malnourished body, his noticeable ribs and an unnatural paleness invading his whole skin.

He had probably felt sick and that was why he went to sleep before her, even against his habits.

She watched her crackers again, and then her professor's sad, thin frame. And she decided, just for that night, she didn't have the strength to be suspicious or reticent. Just for that night, she would believe in him, she would stop doubting him and give herself to their little shared world under the stairs.

Actually, it was she who refused to be convinced that Snape was innocent. Harry had told her, Dumbledore too in his own way, the own Occlumens had shown the truth implicitly. But she didn't want to believe it.

She didn't accept Dumbledore could've been the manipulative wizard he'd have to be to force the half-blood to make a choice like that. She didn't want to imagine that all that mix of secrets had been moving behind his eyes and she wouldn't have been able to see it.

But it was enough of fooling herself and denying it. Snape had been saved by Dumbledore, he'd told her Harry was right, he was protecting her… a Death Eater wouldn't have that kind of bonds with others. And she couldn't nor shouldn't keep ignoring that fact.

The tired, impoverished man dozing off on the floor wasn't the murderous traitor everyone pointed at, he was her professor and her guardian, or at least Harry's.

Granger let herself be eaten by guilt, by absolute confusion, by the feeling of not knowing the world, of not having any certainty. And it was overwhelming, but it also somehow relieved her. Snape had taken a piece of her faith away and now he was giving it back.

The man under the sheets, the bitter dungeon bat, was giving her back her faith. And without knowing it.

* * *

The food had run out two days ago; they'd been filling their stomachs ever since with water and a dubious tea Hermione made with a tree's leaves that extended its branches to the window in one of the rooms upstairs.

They slept a lot. When there had been food they walked around the house, each one on a different path and they only saw each other faces when they went to hide under the stairs. But since the ration started to become smaller and scarce, they tried to recover their strength sleeping and found themselves together in the cupboard most of the day, Snape musing and Hermione reading her storybooks.

She turned the pages and read the worn-out words of Snow White, Pinocchio, Beauty and Beast. She looked at the drawings, which had once excited her, now with overwhelming boredom. Near her Snape tried to stand up, but slid down against the wall, close to falling, dizzy, and just looked at the wall. He didn't seem to want and try again.

Hermione's wound immobilized her arm, but affected her health much less. She could see the man's strength and endurance were diminished by Nagini's bite and saw him languish by malnourishment, without being able to do anything.

Nonetheless, given her nature, Hermione had saved one of her rations, if the time came when she couldn't stand the hunger anymore. Originally, she had hidden it for herself, but Snape's sallow face and limp legs managed to worry her enough to give up her crackers, despite her stomach's growls.

"Here, professor. I saved them for a desperate moment."

The Potion Master supported his nape against the wall and watched her, eyes fixed and disdainful. He was grimacing.

_Saint Granger, protector of the helpless._

She put the crackers in a napkin at the man's feet.

"They're there and they're yours. You decide if you eat them or let them go waste."

Hours passed by where the half-blood didn't seem to want to eat them, but by night Hermione heard, half sinking in her dreams, how the crackers cracked as they were bitten; she opened one eye and looked between the sheets, discovering the Potion Master breaking the cracker he had left with his white, bony hands, with an air of humility or modesty, signatures of a simple man, of a type of man she thought Snape wasn't. He ate very slowly, taking small pieces; his giant nose sharpened his features; his lost, thoughtful gaze, sinking in the room's darkness. It made him look older, maybe wiser than he'd seemed to her before.

When he finished, he shook the crumbs from his lap, with that same thin, hardened and somehow beautiful hands. He laid down on the stall made of quilts and sheets, with the slowness of an old giant, of weak old age, as if nothing hurried him in the world anymore, as if life didn't expect anything from him.

Granger kept on watching the laying figure for a while, hearing the exhalations and the soft, harmonious trips of the half-blood's breathing.

"Thank you, Granger."

The voice, confined for so long, vibrated for a few seconds in the room, like a light turning on in the middle of the air, like bright smoke.

Hermione smiled, gladly surprised, feeling her stomach's hole filling up a bit. As if her starving abstinence had been worth it just a bit.


	12. The Faceless Army

**Disclaimer**: Nothing belongs to me, as always.

This is one of my favourite chapters, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did :)

* * *

**12\. The Faceless Army**

He heard Granger crying under the room's red and white light. She probably thought he was asleep, and she had been right until a few seconds ago when her sobs trespassed his dream's unconsciousness and Snape had opened his eyes.

Granger, when she noticed the eyes fixed on her and her wet cheeks, turned her head in embarrassment and hid it between her arms and sheets, where she kept crying quietly, almost noiseless.

Snape would've liked to say something, but he had never been good with words apart from insulting or hurting someone else. He would have gotten Granger out if he had the power to do so. He was only able to look at her crying and tell himself it'd be fantastic to be Potter or Weasley for once, so he could stop the girl's shivers. But he was Snape and he couldn't erase someone's else pain.

The man's absent gaze was still on her; she trembled for a few seconds, for the static, deep eyes made her feel cold deep inside. She needed him despite being Granger, despite he was Snape, her despotic, arrogant professor. He was the only person close to her right now and she needed some hope, only one word, a gesture, a less remote gaze.

Were they going to die there? Was she going to disappear while those empty eyes watched?

She cried harder without hiding anymore, like complaining, wanting to throw to Snape's face the fact that she needed him desperately, that she needed anybody and that he was letting her sink alone. She was crying of anger too, against Ron, against Harry and her once-revered Professor McGonagall.

"Why the hell don't they come? Does nobody care about us?" the girl asked him with her voice shrilly by her cries, covering half of her face with the quilt. Her eyes were swollen and reddened.

"I want to get outta here! We have to leave!"

Snape started to think of an escape. He didn't have any chance of running away given the spell, but Granger could've gotten out if the Death Eaters weren't there. In the back of his mind, a spark ignited; maybe there was a way of saving her; if he distracted them, if he gave them what they were looking for and delayed them enough, she could run.

"Don't you have anything to say? You're glad we're dying here!"

His dark gaze gained a liveliness it didn't have seconds before.

_It's better to die here with you than alone in the Shrieking Shack, so in fact, it doesn't bother me, Granger._

Granger's brows furrowed, horrified.

_But I just realized it'd be a big waste if you died in this situation, when you could be saved._

"What?" the Gryffindor's voice sounded blurry and congested. Prince shot her a glance full of disdain at her crying, stammering condition.

_Clean your face, Magdalena. I have a solution for you; of course, it could fail and that would mean you die, but you'll die anyway if we stay here, so it better be for something useful._

* * *

Snape explained what he'd planned: they'd weaken the room's protection so the Death Eaters could get inside; he'd be waiting with Hermione's wand and duel them to attract their attention. Meanwhile, Jean would go out through the front door, which was the paradoxically less monitored place by the enemy. Everything could fail, but at least the agony of waiting and starving would end the night they chose.

The Legilimens stopped and the man's voice extinguished inside Granger's head.

He had talked only about her, never explaining how he was going to escape, and Hermione understood what that meant.

"And you? How are you getting out?"

_It's obvious I won't, Granger. Spells are preventing me from doing so._

The girl's direct and saddened expression touched him. Her face was pure eyes, raw and tangible emotion, water, streams, sparks.

"I had to protect you. That's why I came here."

Snape wouldn't have been able to say anything, even if he had the voice to do so.

"I can't leave you here."

That ungrateful Granger, wanting to magnify herself and save everyone alone, always having a brilliant idea that could fix everything. Poor Granger, so vain and stupid. Those were the thing the Legilimens told himself on the inside.

The girl shrunk on her quilts; in her eyes, her sadness spilt for abandoning him, in her swollen pupils one could see her disappointment and rage of having failed him.

"How can't there be another way… Why?"

And she hid her crazy hair, stained of embarrassment by her uselessness.

"How am I to leave you here?"

She knew the Death Eaters would kill him the night she left; she didn't dare to imagine the things they could do to him. And she also wondered if it wouldn't be better to both die together, instead leaving him behind.

Twisted sheets, frantic hands, a storm beginning far away, inside her, on their horizons.

Prince stood up, watching her.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Professor Snape."

She opened her still wet eyes, watching surprised as the man turned around and left.

She couldn't explain to herself why.

* * *

He thought about her all afternoon; at night he didn't want to face her wet face and stayed in the kitchen, watching the sun's retreat and the moon's arrival.

He didn't want to see Granger.

He couldn't stand Gryffindor's emotional explosions. He couldn't stand being reached by them.

A part of Granger's pain was his.

He knew Gryffindors were conceited fools who thought themselves capable of saving the world, and, in a way, she was crying for her diminished ego at seeing herself reduced to what she really was: a mere woman incapable of controlling every event that happened around her.

But he couldn't deny that some of those tears had to be for him too.

He despised her, mocked her in his mind for her conceited innocence and her stupidity, and he still doubled over and unravelled when he thought about those tears, falling all because of him, scattered around his feet.

He deeply despised Granger. The bloody know-it-all from Gryffindor, the haughty, perfect little girl that burned him with her cries, the insufferable big mouth that corroded him with each of her tears and complaints against herself.

Snape could see, with infinite surprise and disgust and an unknown shiver, that Granger really wanted to save him.

* * *

Granger met him in the morning. A curious event had happened the night before when the Death Eaters didn't attack them, just flew around the house, looking closely for some detail unknown to Granger and Snape; it could be reassuring, but both felt something bad was about to happen.

They didn't have much time. They didn't have any strength left; they twisted in hungry and drank gallons of water without manage to subdue it, and besides Riddle's followers were probably preparing themselves for the final attack.

Snape thought Granger had to leave that exact night, it could be her last chance to do so.

The former Prefect wasn't crying anymore, the traces of wariness and doubt had left her face. She looked at him without shame or fear.

"I made a decision, professor."

The man arched a brow, hiding his anxiety under a mask of scepticism.

"I'm staying. I'll never leave just for you to get tortured and killed while I run away, I wouldn't be able to live with that guilt. I'd rather stay here and just let things happen."

_Don't be stupid, Granger! You're leaving tonight!_

The girl sat on a chair in the kitchen calmly, ignoring the man's aggressive, threatening tone.

"No."

The Potion Master walked to her and put his hands on the table, trying to intimidate her as he had done with Potter, but things were different with her.

_Do you realize what you're doing? The most logical thing is for you to escape if you have the chance, idiotic brat._

"I'm not leaving," the girl raised her head and spoke calmly, as if she was talking to her father about something irrelevant.

Snape wrinkled his nose, like a dog just about to attack.

_You'll die here, Granger, if you don't leave._

The girl watched the unused teapot, suddenly melancholic, suddenly scared.

"I know."

She bowed her head like a lamb, healthy hand clutching her pants. Her hair stuck up like a gigantic, brown mane.

"I can't leave you here, I promised Harry—"

Although, deep down she was scared that her courage would fail her and she would end up running away at night in the _muggle _neighbourhood, watching behind her green bolts entering the house.

She doubted she'd still be capable of keeping her promise.

_Then go to hell, idiot!_

The man ripped the kitchen's air with his body, rushing to the door in a rush of violent temper and bestial gestures.

_Egocentric to the point of dying for your ridiculous superiority delusions and your double standards! You'll understand your stupid decision when it's ___too late_, foolish, proud Gryffindor!_

Hermione sat for a long time, thinking about her parents, about Harry, about the Weasleys.

Maybe Snape was right and she should go back where she belonged.

Leaving him behind, behind, in the house's darkness, in a lonely death, in the violent vortex of white masks.

No.

She had to stay.

* * *

Night came and the time to meet and see each other faces under the red light. To see and truly met each other, for the first and probably last time.

Snape arrived first and waited in one of the cupboard's corners; it was so small his head brushed the roof. Curiosity tickled his feet, touched his stomach with invisible, erratic fingers. Would Granger come back and lock herself with him, showing a limitless amount of loyalty and stupidity?

He shivered a bit when he imagined her, standing up in front of him, facing the Death Eaters with her war face, with her arm in a sling and wand high in the air like a flag and a challenge. Defending him.

Only a Gryffindor would be capable of such a poetic, absurd death.

A very dark, small place inside him was a bit glad for not being abandoned, for keeping her company even if she had to pay such a high price. A part of him, outrageously selfish, wanted to keep her and take her away from Potter, keep her with him as they had taken Lily.

He still recognized that awful, warped part of his personality, and yet he would've helped her escape had she wanted to. With time and the punishment of losing Evans, he had learned to push down a great part of his ill intentions and selfish wishes.

He'd try to convince her one last time.

* * *

Granger entered the room and seemed a bit surprised to see him.

_I think yesterday they examined every weak spot in the house and in our charms._

Hermione was looking at him while frowning; there was just determination in her eyes, and right then he knew he wasn't going to change her mind.

_They're coming today, they must be close._

"Yes, they'll be here soon," she got her wand from under her pillow. "Who's going to keep it?"

_Even if they're coming for me, they'll hardly ignore the chance of slicing up and eliminating a muggleborn friend of Harry Potter._

Hermione lowered her eyes.

_They are getting in, Granger, and they are going to kill us. With only one wand and in these conditions, we're not going to win._

"You have more experience in combat, keep it," the long wand was like a bridge between them. Snape looked at the instrument without moving, without taking it, and then moved his eyes to Granger's.

_What do you want to hear so you can leave? I'm not a pious man, Granger, and yet I know it's not worth it for you to lose your life here. Push aside all those fantasies they teach you in Gryffindor and save yourself!_

Hermione kept the wand high between them.

"What I need to hear so I can leave is that they won't torture and kill you, but that'd be a lie, so take the wand, professor Snape, or I'll keep it."

The man never raised his hand and Granger kept the wand, still hoping something was going to save them, that things would be alright. She had seen many miracles, after all, and she waited for one more.

* * *

The first noises appeared in the walls, the starting screams, the following bolts. The walls moaned and wanted to bend under an enormous, blunt force from outside. Snape went out from the cupboard to the darkness interrupted by bolts. Hermione followed him, in the alternating confusion of light and dark pieces of rock falling dizzy from the rook.

She yelled her professor's name to the gaudy night, but her voice was only a lifeless thread unravelled in the ruckus. She recognized in one of the sudden sparks the long face and black hair, getting close to her. Something was pulling her, a body heat dragging her to the cupboard, where she was thrown. The door slammed shut with a final noise.

"Open up, professor! Open up!"

She didn't use her wand for fear of hurting the man that didn't let her go. She smashed it with her fists, kicked it. The door yielded a few centimetres, only to close back again. Over her head, she heard several footsteps, quick and forceful. The bolts were lightening up in the middle of the atmosphere, slipping through the tiny gap of light in the threshold to the cupboard. There was an explosion in some part of the house, close to the kitchen; she heard laughter, the footsteps didn't stop in the kitchen, there was dragging of furniture, windows breaking.

"Professor Snape!" she smashed her whole body against the mass that didn't let her escape, and for a moment she thought she'd make it, but the door closed again, pushing her back to a sudden fall between the twisted sheets.

The footsteps like a horde of horse, laughter, thunder, glass flying at great speed.

"Professor!"

A hoarse voice could be heard outside the cupboard. A voice that didn't belong to Snape.

She threw herself against the door and finally managed to make the door yield; she stumbled, avoiding falling again. And then she found a circle of people with a mask instead of a face, covered in black cloth. Jumping from the stairs, some still getting in through the windows or from the now destroyed kitchen door. Some had their wands in hand, like vipers showing their fangs. Snape's pale, vacant face turned towards her. His naked face exploded in Granger's pupils, his sharp, uncovered countenance, between the firelights and the army of rigid masks. The only human face between so many porcelain faces. At that moment he became a murmur without body, an unknown, ghost voice whispering something to her… when she looked at him every noise around her seemed to subdue, and she got the horrible understanding that it was her time to die.

* * *

**N.T:** Don't worry, we still have a long way to go.


	13. A Stag of Light

**Disclaimer**: Everything belongs to Rowling and Gato Azul.

* * *

**13\. A Stag of Life**

In her breathing, there appeared a knot of fear, a resounding spell of all her life's memories and all the faces she had seen; her parent's faces smiled in her mind, wandering off like doves. Her mind and soul fluttered around Snape's eyes like blind moths. Close to him, a blue light ignited, an incomprehensible stag standing in the door's kitchen.

Blue light. The animal's frame dispersed between her breathing; it grew inside her, warming up everything. Harry's warmth. His invincible, green gaze lightened up the corners of her fear.

She had never loved her friend more as much as in that moment.

The half-blood seemed to notice too the perennial spirit peeking in their house.

His eyes spoke for him.

_Oh! Let him know we're here. Run, Granger!_

The girl followed her body, apparently moving on its own. The Death Eaters advanced towards her, forming human waves; Snape threw himself unarmed on some of them.

"Grab her," she heard someone scream downstairs; she had climbed the stairs in a frantic, reckless flight. She turned her head to see how a sea of hands and bodies tumbled in the stairs, how Snape was swallowed by that human cave of savage arms and nails.

She found two masks when she reached the room upstairs and barely managed to threw them out of the window with an awkward, hurried spell. The Death Eater screamed in such a way she didn't think possible for humans, howling like delirious wolves. There were still noises of windows being broken, and a green, grim light stumbled from the first floor. She ran to the window's frame and let her wand out to cast her _Patronus_, but a howl restrained her blood and thoughts; a painfully familiar voice stood in front of her, producing short, grotesque noises, pieces of yelling and moaning that wrecked before completely spreading.

Snape's mutilated voice.

The _Patronus_ didn't appear from the tip of her wand because she was unable to think of anything happy; she could only pay attention to the hoarse moans and hyena's laughter scattering like gunpowder.

She trembled, without thinking of anything but running downstairs and attack and attack and attack...

The stag stood in front of the window; it looked unearthly compared with the terrible reality of pain and torture, with the screaming and impotence.

Calm and eternal, intact despite the violence she could hear, so close, so hard to quiet down in her mind.

She tried to focus, screwed her lids and squeezed her chaotic head until she could wring Ron's image, the sudden and immense touch of their first kiss, the window to another world that was opened for her when she found love for the first time.

The otter rose to the skies, swam around the trees and the house's roof.

Downstairs the laughter continued, and the screams turned quieter, more agonizing.

"Harry!"

The name of the boy-who-lived, that had been their only hope for so many years, that still was the only helping hand.

"Harry!"

She hoped that, like an amulet, that name could sweep the masked faces downstairs and the shreds of voice that overwhelmed her.

Without being able to control herself anymore, she dragged her rage with her, ready to get rid of anything and anyone that stood in her way. She heard footsteps behind her.

* * *

"Hermione!"

Granger was scrawny and dishevelled; her eyes were red and her face was wet with dirty tears. A frenzied glint shone in her eyes.

"Snape, downstairs!"

Harry understood the meaning of her words when he heard deep moans and laughter downstairs. In the window's frame appeared McGonagall, Hagrid, the Weasleys, Luna and Neville one by one, all armed and quick. They ran downstairs like a deadly cloud, killing in their path the coven's participants that stood in their way. Many of the masked men turned into smoke and perforated the roof like torpedoes. Others stayed behind to fight, and the house was soon filled with burning stars, fireballs and ferocious lightning. Many bodies fell; a trail of light perforated Ginny's leg, and her scream ignited the battle, like a war scream. Minutes passed, Neville rolled down the stairs and fell with a dislocated arm; given the fight McGonagall was, for the first time, wearing her hair loose, falling on her shoulders, making her look more human and somehow more dangerous. Ron gasped, supporting himself against a wall.

The majority of the Death Eaters had run away, but some of them were laying down on the house's floor.

Hagrid and Weasley focused on carried the injured, Hermione and Harry looked for Snape. The girl found him laying face down, close to a scattered Death Eater. There was blood.

That was it, a body with a brown shirt laying down in the middle of the living room. That was how it ended, it was that simple.

The brunette cringed, without leaving her spot. So much effort, so much controlled fear just to end like this, quickly, without managing to do anything.

Harry couldn't bear the weight of believing what was in front of him.

He walked towards the fallen and his tired hand touched his nape, tangling it in the black, straight hair of Prince.

"Professor Snape?"

The Weasley watched him, condescending and pale. Hagrid's bushy eyebrows merged in a worried frown. McGonagall was still.

All of them shared a small scream as the half-blood lifted his head.

* * *

They conjured several stretchers, where they put Neville and Ginny. Hagrid and Luna tried to realign Longbottom's bones, who was biting his lips and shifting. Molly was taking care of her daughter.

The Golden Trio, McGonagall and Arthur had surrounded Snape. Harry seemed divided between a redhead and his mother's friend. He was going from this to that place constantly. The Weasleys' father helped Snape stand up and stabilize his legs; the Occlumens was shaking frantically, it looked as if they'd just pulled him out of a frozen lake. He'd have collapsed if Hermione and Ron weren't holding him by his arms.

His hair covered most of his face, many strands sticking to the bloodstain on his forehead; crimson drips fell from his nose and chin. He tilted to Arthur like an old tree. Ron watched with surprise how Hermione whispered encouragement words and tried to touch him, always regretting it just before her hand reached him.

The sat him on the first steps of the stairs. Granger went looking to the cupboard for sheets to clean Snape' and Ginny's blood.

They organized themselves in groups: Molly and Hagrid took Ginevra; Luna and Arthur were preparing to leave with Longbottom, and yet they were sorrowful because the house's protection still wouldn't let the half-blood leave. They didn't know what kind of magic they'd have used to seal it. The trio and Minerva decided to stay.

* * *

In a corner of the house, McGonagall and Potter immobilized the wounded Death Eaters and left, saying they'd be back before dawn came.

They were left alone, then. Hermione, Ron and Snape.

The redhead watched distantly Jean's light and careful hand, tracing the Potion Master's bruises, staining a part of the sheet with still-warm blood.

The man watched the floor stubbornly; his jaw trembled; his body shook.

_Residual effects of _Cruciatus, both Gryffindors thought without saying it.

Hermione finished cleaning the wound and noticed its shape:

_Traitor_.

It was written in the middle of the forehead, with clunky handwriting. She'd have liked to control herself, to avoid upsetting her professor, but she covered her mouth with her hand and tears left her eyes without her permission. Weasley grimaced, making it clear to the Potion Master that whatever they'd done to his face it was awful, maybe disfiguring. Ever since he felt the wand's pain cutting his flesh he considered it as a possibility.

_Lend me a mirror._

The youngest male Weasley startled when he noticed he was being addressed. Snape's presence was still uncomfortable and nasty to him, but followed drily the man's request.

The man touched with trembling fingers the cleft's corners while looking at his reflection, clenching his jaw. The Death Eaters really didn't have any creativity left. They'd marked hundreds of people like that, and yet what they'd done to his Mark was new: they had burnt it, leaving a repulsive scar on his whole forearm and the skin sensible and fractured. Weasley bound his head and arm, given that Granger was still using the sling and found it difficult.

* * *

He opened his eyes; the three of them had fallen asleep around the stairs. Granger and Weasley held each other in the middle of their dreams, one supporting the other and vice versa, their warm hands joined. Ron's breathing blew between brown hair, like a summer breeze in the countryside.

Snape watched them for a moment, acknowledging his loneliness, burning with envy and hate towards them all, towards those too, towards that idiotic redhead that had managed to keep Granger with him despite his immaturity and his irresponsible acts.

He touched his burned forearm, painfully recognizing the scars that now maimed him.

He was burning with rage, with resentment with no target, attacking everyone and no one. To Weasley who was unworthy and yet loved, to Potter and McGonagall, to Granger…

That bloody Granger that had cried when seeing the scar on his forehead, stupid, stupid Granger.

He walked to the kitchen, supporting himself against the walls with a lot of effort. He sat on one of the chairs, gaze fixed on the white, cloudy sky of the morning. The previous night, while hearing himself scream, he'd been convinced he was going to die; he wouldn't have been able to explain the whirlwind and disorganized series of sensations that had choked him: panic, fear, shame at having died like that, like a bug, disgust at himself, a bitter happiness for knowing he wouldn't have to face anyone or anything ever again, an old, cornered sadness which he didn't want to face, an unexpected bewilderment when remembering Granger and her bravery, the know-it-all's loyalty that managed to challenge his prejudices.

* * *

The first thing Hermione saw was Ron's sleeping face, his red eyelashes and thin bows. She stood still, watching him for a moment, without daring to breath or move. She wouldn't have been able to imagine a few days ago how close were joy and relief. Everyone was okay, there were some injured, but everyone was safe and Ron was with her.

Ron, Ron, Ron, like a loving meow. She smiled to herself and felt stupid, but very happy in spite of that. It took some minutes for her to realize Snape wasn't where he had laid down exhausted the night before.

She slipped away carefully, leaving the boy half supported over the steps. She looked at him again for a long time; those skinny legs were her Ronald's, that bright, striking hair, her Ronald's hair.

She peeked at the cupboard, but it was empty, the quilts were still laying all over the place as she had left them. She went upstairs and didn't find anything but pieces of glass on the floor and emptiness. Finally, she looked for him in the kitchen, without getting alarmed; there was no way he could leave the house, after all.

She found him sitting at the table, almost demurely, watching over the window.

She heard his screams from the night before inside her head as if they were a recording and shivered a bit in the threshold. She could barely believe the man that had been howling like that was the same man sitting in front of the table so calmly, as if nothing had happened. But she was fooling herself; Snape seemed truly depressed, his eyes were sunken and the eyebags had become two big, black circles around his sockets. He looked quite unhappy.

"Professor, how do you feel?"

The man turned around slowly and watched her like one watched a shadow in the living room. Granger felt really uncomfortable, almost transparent to the black eyes, as if her weight was empty, just air.

_Isn't it obvious, Granger? I could be jumping on one foot._

The dishevelled girl stepped into the kitchen and sat in front of the gaunt man.

"You must be hungry. Harry and the professor came back at dawn, but you were asleep, and we didn't want to wake you up. They went out to buy food and some stuff for the house."

In the past, he'd have felt offended at knowing everyone watched him while asleep, but it didn't matter anymore: they had seen him in agony, in prison, dirty, bloody, in every humiliating way known to man, what did it matter if they saw him asleep or not.

"They explained what happened," Granger kept talking, who would never waste the opportunity of using her big mouth non-stop. "Apparently, the Ministry cast protections around the house that turned it invisible and prohibited visits and mail so nobody could find us and that way we'd be safe from the Death Eaters. Maybe it'd have worked if it weren't for a detail."

She made a dramatic pause, watching him inquisitively as if she was waiting for a question of his to continue the tale.

_Are you going to finish telling it or are you waiting for me to complete your pleasant story?_

"Don't you wonder what that small detail was?"

_The Ministry is full of Death Eaters? Is that your open secret?_

Granger seemed taken aback.

"Did you know?"

_It's obvious._

"Well, yeah, but…" Hermione didn't seem to know how to continue. "The thing is that our location wasn't a secret for the Death Eaters, but it was for Harry and our allies, so we were in a really dangerous situation all this time."

_I see. I hadn't noticed at all._

The girl frowned slightly.

"Harry and Ron looked for us for days. They thought they'd transferred us somewhere else, but they started to dig in the Ministry, you know Harry's cloak and Polyjuice Potion, and managed to understand what was really happening. It was a big scandal; the Ministry was taken by force last night and many officers fled; only a few of them weren't involved in the Death Eater situation. It was really lucky Harry arrived on time.

The man listened carefully for a few moments before turning his gaze to the window.

"You really were wi—lling to die. Every Gry—findor is the same."

Hermione got a bit closer, tilting her head in a kind gesture.

"I can't say the same about the Slytherin. You, for example, surprise me more and more each day."

The professor turned her gaze back to her.

"Maybe you should've been one of us."

_I doubt it, Miss Granger._

Hermione looked at the bandage on Snape's forehead; a few thin blood marks were appearing on it. And she was sure, absolutely sure, that the Potion Master was, at his heart, one of them.


	14. The Limbo

**Disclaimer**: All of this came from Rowling and Gato Azul.

* * *

**14\. The Limbo**

The trial was to be finished as soon as Snape could talk; despite everything, the registrar hadn't been one of the corrupt officials of the Ministry; in fact, he'd been chosen as an Interim Minister while all the internal problems were solved and a new, permanent Minister was chosen.

The Ministry sent a written apology and lent a new house, much more acceptable than the last one, positioned inside a magic neighbourhood, although Severus still was forbidden from using his wand or performing any kind of magic.

* * *

The Weasley, McGonagall and Hagrid had met to decide who'd be with Snape the rest of the house arrest.

Harry offered to be with the Occlumens in his new period of arrest. Hermione wasn't in the best conditions and had suffered enough. Everyone agreed except Granger. Snape himself seemed unsatisfied with the choice.

"Harry, the hardest part is over, you don't have to switch with me. The professor and I have barely gotten used to sharing a house, and now you're going to make him uncomfortable without a good reason. A visit to a mediwizard and my arm will be just as good as new."

Everyone looked at each other, coughing and moving their eyes, talking to each other without making any noise. Harry was doubtful.

"What do you think, Severus?" Arthur asked, the first one who had the decency of noticing the man was there too.

"Not Potter, nor Weasley," he said with the less words possible, avoiding stuttering in front of so many people.

Hermione looked at her friends victoriously; both rolled their eyes.

"Who do you prefer, then?"

_I guess Granger is the only option close to acceptable._

Molly seemed anxious, McGonagall for her part agreed immediately.

Hermione was half-smiling when, between doubts and unease, they named her his official caretaker.

* * *

The new house was pretty; her room had a nice bed, a bureau and a closet. Everything seemed simpler; they had lots of food and her arm had recovered so much after the healing she didn't need the sling anymore.

There was a painting in her room, a vase with yellow flowers.

Someone knocked on the door, it was Snape. He left on her hands many letters, that according to him Orestes had just carried, the Ministry's owl. Harry, Ron and Ginny had written to her. Ron's was short but cheery; Harry and Ginny wrote about each other and so Hermione had a double recounting of their dates. She smiled to herself, thinking it was strange that Harry never told Ginny how much he liked her new haircut, while she, in her letter, seemed worried because she maybe looked ugly in her new haircut.

She wondered if all couples were like that, if they desperately longed for each other and stopped for fear of speaking up and always stood like that, with a bunch of questions and insecurities that could've been solved.

* * *

How sad was Snape's frame contrasted with the white sky showing from the window, his slow walks to nowhere, his gloomy shadow and long moments sitting on a couch, with his eyes fixed on the table, without speaking or even looking at her.

She prepared him food, tried to talk to him with more than a few words, but nothing seemed to ground him. She was filled with fear when she had to go out to buy groceries and leave him alone; the bright, haunting thought that she'd find something terrible when she came back, an eternal silence stuck in the house, chasing her everywhere.

And when she watched him immobile for hours, reading the same page of a book, always the same, that fear increased. She went to the kitchen for a while and afterwards came back to check if the page had changed, but no, she recognized the same spaces and her gaze went to Snape's, which was fixed on the wall, empty.

She dreamt with that page, she dreamt that she tried to read it and ended up realizing there was nothing written there, that the words were unknown symbols.

As unknown as the thoughts that passed behind the wizard's eyes.

* * *

They had just received the mail; she put the letters on the kitchen receiver while serving soup to her former professor, who was looking somewhere else as always, with arms crossed over the table, without paying attention to anything Hermione did.

"What's your book about, professor Snape?"

"Potions," his answer was blunt, a clear warning in his tone.

"I thought it was about Runes."

The man's face turned from drowsy impassivity to sudden annoyance.

_Why don't you go and read your child stories or answer of Weasley's dull letters instead of bothering me?_

Granger put the plate in front of him with the aura of a mother or a housewife.

"Because you're more important than that; you're the reason I'm here and I'm worried about your state."

_You're worried about my disinterest in Runes?_

"I'm worried about your disinterest in everything. If there's something I can do for you, please ask."

The man said nothing and took the spoon to his mouth, taking special care in avoiding meeting Hermione's eyes, who was sitting in front of him and starting to eat.

After the Death Eater's attack, any doubt she might have about Snape had been eradicated. She couldn't find the reason for his undying loyalty towards Dumbledore, and yet she was convinced it existed and that the man would've never betrayed them.

Although she had felt flattered at the beginning for being chosen as his companion in the house arrest, that pride soon wore out with the days and it ended up being replaced by her growing anguish about Prince's absolute apathy.

* * *

She sat close to him on purpose, shielded by her storybook. She opened it with discretion; Snape put his eyes on the Rune's page, without making any effort to pretend he was actually reading.

Granger twisted a curl of her hair with her finger as she read her blissful book. She noticed the drawings for the first time: a princess was caressing the muzzle of a gigantic, hairy monster.

"What are you reading?"

Hermione quickly turned her head, as if she had just heard a noise that startled her. She extended the book to him so he could see better while answering, solicitous. She seemed unwilling to waste an opportunity to talk to him; he regretted having asked her.

"This is the Beast, and this is the Beauty. It's a classic tale that is based on the teaching that the physical aspect isn't the most important thing and that one can love anyone regardless of their appearance."

She realized she was invading the man's personal space and that he had cornered himself, trying to get away, looking at her with a raised brow.

"Sorry," she retreated wisely with a light blush. Harry and Ron were used to her bouts when she was talking about a subject she found interesting, but the rest of the people weren't, especially not Snape.

_So now apart from fighting for the elves' rights, you'll fight for the ugly people's rights too?_

Hermione frowned; now he was mocking her, it was to be expected.

"Most of us aren't good-looking, Professor Snape. Beauty is overrated."

_There are lots of things over- and underrated, Granger, and one doesn't protest about it. You're not going to change the world on your own._

Hermione sat back on the floor, watching as Snape rubbed his nose's bridge.

"You're right, but I still have to try anyway."

The man looked at her meaningfully; he really watched her, it wasn't one of his disdainful glances. She shifted with uneasiness from her spot on the carpet. Few people had burning eyes like his, they made her feel vulnerable.

"What do you want for dinner?" she asked, trying to run away from the dialogue she herself had started. In any case, she had the satisfaction that she managed to pull him out from his silence, at least for a while.

* * *

Although he had resisted it, his initial impression of Granger had changed greatly. When they had proposed changing her for Potter he realized it; he hated the pretentious brat, Granger was infinitely nicer in his opinion.

He had thought her to be conceited and a hypocrite for many years; he had taught her, had seen her for years and yet only then he was figuring out her real character. She was a big mouth alright, but her know-it-all attitude had changed with time. Her bravery wasn't a lie, it was a part of her, spread inside her, he had to give her that. And even though at the beginning of their confinement together he had thought her kindness was learned and a faked Gryffindor attitude, he had to accept it as genuine after she stood with him despite all the danger. Granger really had good intentions, was kind by nature and merciful too. And on top of that, incorrigibly stubborn.

He supposed she didn't thought him too bad, considering that she tried to hunt him constantly to squeeze a short, forced chat out of him. She got close to him with ease, although she never touched him. And she smiled at him with this tiny, shy smile, not too much enthusiastic, as if she feared bothering him by being happy in his presence. She wasn't completely wrong.

* * *

They met each other one day almost randomly, together in the living room. The curtains were open and from the outside came the whispers of a party, the lively lights and music insinuating themselves in the air, carefully drawn, sneaking into their daily silence.

Granger closed her book, her faithful companion, and went to look out the window and try to catch the trends of tunes floating in the night.

Snape had been wandering weakly, and sometimes glanced at her. He saw how attentive she was, how her eyes had opened to hugeness and brown shone in them. She shook her brunette head, following the sound's tune, accepting its travelling murmur.

Framed by the window, the people on the other side of the street traced circles of waltz, full of elliptic circles and waves of skirts. Almost all of them were adults, taking their hands and laughing like lovers of many years. Hermione didn't know what kind of meeting it could be, but she kept in her eyes the smiles and loving, mature nods many of them gave in their dance, of clear, open piano notes, of light, measured steps.

Granger didn't move, but music brushed her like a distant breeze, like a light from another room. Snape discovered with a start that Granger had her moments of beauty, that her careful, open gaze was a waiting space, of reception, of a free and willing atmosphere.

She turned her head, as if he'd touched her just by looking.

"When was the last time you danced, Professor Snape?"

He had actually never danced, but he wasn't about to say that.

_I don't usually waste my time with this type of things. I thought it was obvious._

"It is. I was just looking for a subtle way of asking you to dance with me, just one song."

He had just discovered that, on occasions, in a very implicit way, Granger was beautiful, fleetingly, barely one moment, when she looked firmly somewhere else, when she seemed alone, when she was absorbed by her inner world, when a piece of him shone in the surface of her eyes.

He was incredibly intuitive about some things; he knew the image his lanky body offered when he tried to follow a tune and he didn't intend to show that uncoordinated, pitiful sway to the recently discovered Granger; he'd rather scare her away with words than with his pathetic attempt of waltz.

"One song. Even if you don't know how to dance it could cheer us up a lot, I'm talking by experience. Harry and I danced in a camping tent."

_I don't know what makes you think Potter and I are the same._

Hermione didn't insist too much; she had started the fight knowing she'd lose. But she needed that dance, she needed to shake the rancid air of isolation and revive in her legs that same fluid, imprecise move Harry had taught her. She slid from one foot to the other, barely moving from her spot in the room, and she slid again, several times, joining the dance's harmonious parade of dresses and painted faces, breaking in her mind the barrier from window to window.

Alone, just by herself, Granger had created a protest, starting a kind of waltz for one, without raising her arms, just using her legs. Gryffindor was a synonym for stubbornness.

Ridiculously, following Granger's stupidity, he took a sudden step forward, raising his hand, to tangle in the dance already started that waited for him. The girl looked at him suddenly, surprised. Snape had suddenly turned rigid like a board and had lowered the arm, whipping the air. He watched her with his full height, chin raised, as if daring her to mock him.

He thought the girl would look at him darkly, that she'd try to concealing the laughter caused by his failure even before starting the waltz. He had always moved like a spider, he didn't have elegance or grace concerning beat and tempo. He had expected a look of strangeness and derision from her, but Granger watched his stiff hand, still waiting for him to reach her, but it didn't happen. Snape turned her back on her and went away, trying to calm his anger towards himself.

He would've liked more than that easy resignation and starting to dance on her own. Moronic Granger, inventing a delightful symphony, swaying around a soft tune, leaving him on the outside, like an ugly stain that didn't match her and her pretty way of turning poetry alive.

Moronic Granger couldn't have guessed that he desperately wished they wouldn't give up on him, that for once he wished they fought him, pushed him out of his guilt prison.

So blindly, foolishly Gryffindor. She had tried, yes, but with such a weak, feeble attempt.

He wanted to be happy, like the dancing idiots!

But he was Snape and Snape didn't dance, Death Eaters' didn't dance, neither did spies.

His resentment towards Granger grew bigger each day. He was a miser and she suddenly showed up, talking to him with a quiet voice, as if she would hurt him otherwise, as if he was really frail and would break with just a breeze. Then it came the choking, as he felt he would really break, that the bite on his throat would open and open until it cut him by half. And it was because of Granger and her unnecessary, cumbersome kindness that nobody else had shown him.

That was it. She was kind and he grew tinier because of her, because of that softness which he couldn't take and that made things more difficult. He wasn't capable of accepting smiles nor understanding eyes, they slipped from his hands, they reminded him of the snowfall of ashes at Spinner's End. They reminded him of his parent's screams, the meanness that throbbed in Tobias. He was Severus Snape and subtlety wasn't his natural field. He hated her and yearned for her in equal measures.

Granger's kindness hurt him because it couldn't reach him, because it didn't manage to shield him.

And he hated her even more for her frustrating, insufficient gifts. And yet the next day he'd find himself looking for some of her kind actions, just to crush her afterwards with sarcasm or a rude grimace. And Granger shrank, without knowing what to do.

The moronic know-it-all didn't know how to reach him.

The moronic know-it-all he waited with hungry impatience. The only company he had, the only he could hold on to.

His lengthy existence didn't have any meaning or sense anymore, he had to find it. Granger had to find it for him, because he wasn't capable of doing it himself, because every day he was hit with the certainty it was better to be dead.

He woke up to experiment a few more hours, to see if she reached him, if she showed him something that fed his will.

Sometimes, thinking about killing himself calmed him down. He told himself he had complete free will in that decision, that it could be quick or slow and progressive. He thought about the potion he'd drink and about the hand hanging from the bed, very white. He thought about the fulminant herbs that'd fry his brain, that would exterminate in one breathing every thought, every sensation. It was almost pleasant to plan the details; that was how he fought the anguish off: by telling himself he didn't have to bear it if he didn't want to, that this time it was all on him.

Nobody would force him on anything this time. Because, in reality, nothing he did with his life or death mattered anymore.

* * *

Snape was sitting on the couch with the lights off and the Rune's book opened on his legs, but his mind was far away. She could see it in his empty gaze, full of clouds and smoke, as if some memory repeated in his mind over and over again. She wouldn't have liked to know which memory it was, she had the feeling it was an awful one. The Potion Master seemed to be always thinking of something, of many things at the same time. He didn't see what was in front of him anymore, his eyes were static in a past that repeated itself like a movie to the infinite. Hermione would've liked to touch his face, pull his hair, make him look at her, make him conscious of his body sitting on the couch and that she was next to him, that the danger was over and no one else would attack him again. Harry wouldn't allow it, neither would Hermione, and even if he hadn't had anyone before, now he had them, unconditionally.

Granger had promised herself to pull him out of that hole with the same passion that Harry would use. If the goal of that fight was to protect Snape and save him from the Ministry and from his own ghosts, then they would do it together, the three of them, as they had always done.

She entered the little room and turned on a light.

"Mail is here, Professor Snape."

She saw the grieving man looking away, as if he was still estranged. She had just pulled him out of deep meditation.

"It doesn't matter."

"They sent you something too: Madame Pomfrey sent you many balms for your scars."

She put out each jar from the package and left them next to Snape, on the chair beside the couch.

"What do you think, Professor Snape? We can try them now; if you had the kindness to let me—" she managed to brush his forearm for a few seconds before he took it away. He wasn't looking at her.

"Leave me alone."

Hermione felt something akin to a punch to her stomach, of humidity and emptiness. She went away, swallowing reject like a bitter drink. When she got to the threshold and looked back, she felt a bird flutter inside her chest because of Snape's crooked shape, the book on his legs and his distant gaze, so sad, so insurmountable. She knew he was falling and falling. She had to fill the moment with words, she couldn't leave him like that, leave him to his strength that wouldn't support him anymore.

"Maybe you can't see it now, professor Snape; maybe you can't trust me and I don't blame you, but try to believe me, I want to help you, I want you to be okay, even if we're not friends, even if we don't like each other… I can't imagine what you're going through, but let me help you, rely on me. I'll be upstairs if you need me, in case you want to talk to someone or just need some company. My door is open."

Granger's shape, darkened against the light, went away through the hallway; her steps still echoed, weaker and weaker.

Snape didn't move for a long time.

* * *

_I need your help, Harry. I know there's something you haven't told me and you have to, not for me, not even for the trial, but for him._

_He sleeps little, he's always sitting with a book I know he doesn't read. He's so pale and eats without wanting to, every day he leaves more food on the plate. I try to talk to him, but he doesn't listen. I don't mean like the rude way he used to ignore us, now he really doesn't listen to me, I don't think he can._

_I can't reach him. I don't know what to do, Harry; it's like watching him drown and being unable to throw him a rope. He needs me, he needs anyone who can help him, but I don't know what to do, I feel useless._

_Tell me, what do I do? Whatever drove him all this time, where did it go? What did he lose? What did they take away from him? I know he lost something, I can feel he's missing a part of him, that he's cleaved. _

_Please, Harry, help me, give me advice, you know more about him, tell me what can I do, how can I help him?_

_Imploring you, Hermione J. Granger._

* * *

_Maybe now he can't see it._

_No, he couldn't see farther than the living room's dim light and the limbo he was stuck in._

_One day he heard that one can live with anything if only you have a purpose. He knew by experience that was right, and yet that purpose was no longer there for him._

_He didn't have anything to hold him down, beside the habit of being alive. Only that, habit. In his new world, there weren't any Dumbledore, or Dark Lord, or his debts to Lily._

_Lily, who was finally fading again. He could barely remember her face; he spent hours trying to recall it in his memory, but he failed, and it was like losing her again, as if an invisible hand went around opening his fingers and prying her away from him._

_What did he have left, beside remembering her? Nobody should take her away from him, she was his, his. And yet he couldn't see her anymore, untainted, walking on his mind; he couldn't see her face or her hair. And desperation made knots in his throat, his voice already rusty tightened like a bow._

_'In case you want to talk to someone or just need some company.'_

_He didn't know what was he doing, he simply closed the book and went upstairs without being conscious of it. He tried on his way to recover Lily's image, with his mind crashing against time's oblivion, digging uselessly between another hundreds of faces. It was like delirium, it almost hurt._

_He couldn't remember Lily; he couldn't call out for her._

* * *

Hermione lifted her head from the pillow and identified the man in the threshold. Snape had the expression of someone who had just been stabbed.

She stood up to face him, finding his eyes reddened and astray, almost wet.

"What is it? Does something hurt? Is it the bite?"

_You said I could come, but if you changed your mind…_

"No," she said hurriedly. "Sit down."

She smoothed the sheets in an unnecessary gesture of hospitality.

"Come here, sit down," the man went to the mattress' edge and sat down, taking his long hand to his temple, showing the pain that had forced him to go there. Hermione didn't know where to go, whether to sit on the floor or by his side on the bed. She couldn't guess what'd be more appropriate, and her discomfort made Snape tense too; she sensed him looking at her for a moment with something akin to resentment.

And she couldn't understand why.

She took from a drawer the salves and some clean bandages. The silence would be less intense if she did something. She noticed, as she opened the jars and the peppermint's scent filled the room, that Snape still had the Runes book in his hands.

She kneeled in front of him and slowly took the book, putting it away. Her fingers landed on Snape's forearm and unfolded the bandages. The half-blood let her be; she didn't raise her head, didn't want to look at him in the eye. Down there, on his lap and in the warm, dim light of the afternoon she was at peace. She didn't want to see his sunken face, the distant, bottomless gaze.

She wanted to think the physical contact between their hands was enough, that it was useful, that she could help him just by doing that.

She rubbed the salves on the burns. The feeling was a bit repulsive, but she controlled herself. She remembered hearing his screams and, as she watched the marks on his arms, she thought about the fact that each second she spent upstairs trying to call her Patronus was a centimetre more of skin undone.

"Does it hurt?"

No one answered. Hermione took her eyes to the pale palms, to the loose folds of his black clothes, to the weak knees.

"I'm sorry I didn't believe in you since the beginning, but I don't need proof anymore. Now I know I didn't have any right to ask them, you were right in being angry at me."

The injured arm was still between her fingers, the pale hand half opened like a lily.

"Who am I to judge you?"

She raised her gaze while covering the burn with a gaze. It was better to hide it, to avoid having visible the mark that had been there before.

Prince was looking at her; a murmur of waves vibrated in his pupils, of an unfathomable, nocturnal ocean.

Again that long, truthful gaze that seemed to have to power to turn her into a transparent body. Something in his eyes had always amazed her, had always inspired terror in her.

She let him go, because she was afraid.

* * *

_I barely understand why I went up. I couldn't see Lily; I lost the ability to do it. And with her, I lost the last piece of breath that gave me life._

_I stood at the door; you were laying down with your storybook and didn't notice me until a few seconds after._

_I didn't have to tell you anything because you knew, I don't understand how. You even asked me if something hurt. You made me sit on your bed and ended up debating against yourself. I thought it would be useless, that I should've never gone up looking for you._

_You kneeled and I saw your thick hair. I felt your hands and you hurt me; why such small fingers like yours could manage that? You kept rubbing that salve of nauseating smell and kept on hurting me. But I couldn't say anything, I didn't want you to let me go, it hurt, but you were too gentle. I know the injury came from me, not from your compassionate touch. Compassionate, exactly that._

_Who do you think you are, Granger, to behave like that with me?_

_Even if you forgive me and Potter forgives me and Lily too, I can't forgive myself. I deserve what I got, Granger; your kindness is not mine to have. And yet I didn't push you away; if I'm going to be executed, at least I want to take this with me, I don't care if I'm unworthy. You gifted me your comfort and it is mine._

_And you talked; you were saying something like I had the right to be angry with you. Do you think so? You annoy me, I have to admit it; I liked you more when you were a pedantic know-it-all. I liked to mock you and to tell myself that at least I didn't have such a big, unconscious ego. That I saw clearly. But I don't see, Granger; I never saw you as you truly were._

_You say you're nobody to judge me._

_I have judged you, since you were a child, and you feel bad for yourself? If you were any other person I'd think you were lying, that you're a hypocrite; I would have thought so until a few days ago, but now I know it's true._

_You overwhelm me, Granger. You and your words, your touch, the things you do, everything about you overwhelms me._

_You're similar to Lily, and that is precisely the worst thing you could ever be._

_You raise your head and look at me. Clear, transparent; you're not capable of hiding anything, even without Occlumency I can almost touch your emotion. You're afraid of me._

_And I'm afraid of you._


	15. The Shadow Man

**Disclaimer**: All rights belong to Rowling and Gato Azul.

* * *

**15\. The Shadow Man**

_The only thing I can tell you, Hermione, is to be friendly, don't push him, he can't think you're faking it._

_He lost something, that's true, but it doesn't matter that you know what it was, we can't give it back. Just try to be his friend; I don't think it will be easy, but to be honest, from the three of us, I think you're the one he hates the least._

_Take care._

_Waiting for your response, Harry J. Potter._

* * *

_Why are you following me? Sometimes I turn around and you're there, always watching me without me realizing it, as if you were waiting for something, as if you were looking for something inside me. What do you pretend to do, Granger?_

_You can't find anything in a person like me, but you don't give up. You surprise me by showing up everywhere, telling me about anything that comes to your mind. At the beginning you asked me about Potion's preparation methods, then you asked about occlumency and defence; with time your excuses ran out, and you ended up talking to me about teeth and political parties._

_What absurd theme will you bring me today?_

_It seems you're losing respect for me, you come close without fear, looking at me directly as you didn't dare before, you once even touched me, putting your hand on my shoulder while chatting about something about the trials. Your touch's warmth penetrated the fabric, you were half smiling. There was like a clot at that point where we brushed. You and me, who were nothing alike._

_No, Granger. You and I are nothing alike._

_Your talkative attitude annoys me. In another situation, I'd have shut your never-closing mouth, but I'd rather hear your constant, shrilly voice than my inner monologue._

_I'd rather listen to you talking about muggle buildings and London's weather. I have been thinking less since you started harassing me with your eternal presence._

_And what if they find me guilty, Granger? What are you going to do? What will happen to all the words and hours you've spent on me? Will you forget about them?_

_I hope to forget these days if they find me guilty. You're useless to me, you don't inspire me to raise my head and mock everyone while they execute me, because I know you'll be one of them and I don't know if I could laugh at your face like a hyena. Before this, maybe, but not now, as I've heard you talking about cavities and gum's diseases and camping trips to the woods and dances inside camping tents._

_My world is not part of your world; you wouldn't understand a sardonic smile, the exchange of vengeful gazes, the pleasure of destroying something. You think you know everything, but there are many things you don't understand._

_Maybe it's better that way._

_There you are in the threshold, carrying that bloody book again. You come here to disturb me, you think you're so interesting? Conceited Granger, know-it-all, big mouth._

_Again your hand is on my shoulder and your eyes doubt._

_"Would you like to read with me for a while?"_

_No, Granger, I wouldn't want to, but I'll do it anyway. There's nothing beside you and your storybook waiting for me._

* * *

_Harry, tell me we're going to win, we have to win. He's not going to step into Azkaban, he won't. We're not going to allow it, even if we lose the trial. You have a plan, right? I'm starting to create one, even if this limbo goes on, if I keep going on like this, without any goal, it doesn't matter. He's not going to prison, he has your wand and mine's and Ron's, right?_

_Would it be the four of us, then? Like fugitives?_

_I hope it doesn't end up like that. You can ask me for help about the defence; I know you can figure it out on your own, but just in case, I'm here._

_Harry, please don't leave any holes or opportunities for misinterpretations, make it blunt, so they can't condemn him. Now I believe you, Harry. I know he is and has been with you all this time, like on our first year, when we thought he wanted to kill you and instead he was protecting you._

_Loves you, your best friend Hermione J. Granger._

* * *

The grieving man was standing next to the kitchen's window, drinking water and looking through it. Hermione watched him in silence; he hadn't noticed her yet and she could study him without fear for a few moments. He was recovering his normal weight, none of his scars still bleed, and Hermione wondered if he was scared about the trials. Sometimes she heard him walk all over the place, anxiously.

He didn't have anything to fear. They once managed to release Sirius, and they'd release him too.

She would've found hard to believe that one day she and Harry would be defending the dungeon's bat with the same passion they'd have used to defend Remus or Sirius. She recalled her two friends; she saw their faces from afar, their way of smiling, Lupin's sad air, Sirius' bold eyes. She was still unable to avoid feeling unhappy when she thought about them, and about Fred.

She rubbed her eyes, avoiding tears. Snape had turned around at some point and was watching her fight against tears.

"I'm sorry. I was thinking about Remus and Sirius."

The half-blood lifted his chin slightly; the mere fact of hearing their names seemed to offend him.

Hermione didn't say anything else; if there was something that bothered her about Snape was the fact he kept on hating the Marauders even dead, that he was so resentful and unable to forgive them, even though they had already paid with their lives any mistake they might have committed.

"I know you never liked them."

_I wouldn't say it in such a subtle way._

"I know you hate them, but they died fighting for the same cause than you. Let the past stay in the past."

Snape looked at the floor with tense mutism and fierce eyes, almost sharp.

_You better keep quiet, Granger, and stop talking about things you don't know about._

Hermione tightened her lips and left; she didn't want to fight him and, had she stayed, she would have done it. That aspect was irreconcilable between them. He would never forgive Remus nor Sirius and she would never stop remembering them with a hurtful, melancholic start.

* * *

"Professor Snape."

_You were waiting for me outside my room; you seemed slightly anxious and your eyes swept my whole face. I don't like to be looked at like that, Granger._

"Could I see…? Would you allow me to examine your…?"

_You pointed at my forehead, without daring to name my face's mark._

"Your scar?"

_I told you I wasn't going to be your guinea pig and you breathed deeply, raising your eyebrows, outraged. I realized you had started to brush your hair, now you carried it in a long braid. I preferred it tangled and hanging loose, that way you seem less prim, less pretentious._

_Because that's what you are, a conceited, pretentious brat._

"I'm not going to experiment, I know very well what I can and cannot do and I think if you let me, I could partially wipe the scar."

_I protested that it was made with dark magic and couldn't be healed. You looked around the room, thoughtful and obfuscated._

"I know, but I have a theory and—"

"And you said you weren't going to ex—periment."

"It won't hurt, please. We don't lose anything by trying."

* * *

The face Snape made when I told him we wouldn't lose anything by trying left me even more doubtful; his mouth stretched in such a way, it seemed he was mocking me on the inside.

"Please, sit."

He didn't listen to me, just stood still. He had raised his brow, making me feel like a bug under a microscope.

"Please."

Snape smiled. It wasn't a reassuring gesture; his smile was never a good sign.

_If you kneel, I may do it._

"I'm not going to kneel, Professor Snape. I may be able to remove that from your face, please."

I have tried to follow Harry's advice and treat him with easiness, as if he wasn't who he was, as if I didn't fear him at all. I don't know whether I truly fear him, but he inhibits me; his gestures pull me back to my first year at Hogwarts when he humiliated me in front of the whole class. I feel like I'm there again and I can't remove my anxiety. He can't hurt me now, but I can't stop feeling suspicion, I haven't managed to erase it.

I have to be brave. If I want to help him, I have to forget his taunts.

* * *

_I finally sat down. I wanted to challenge you, you seemed determined and reached me. You pointed your wand above my eyes._

_You have grown up. Everyone has grown up and I got old. When did I lose my youth? My life went on quickly, I did so many stupid things and this is the only thing I really got, a house arrest and an annoying companion._

_Never Lily._

_Although sometimes you remind me of her, although now over your face I can almost sense hers._

_I'll never stop asking myself why, why was I so stupid? Why did I exchange her for a place with the Death Eaters? Everything is my fault._

_Your big eyes were there, watching mine without focusing on what your wand was doing up there on my forehead._

_"We will find a way to erase it, you won't have to bear it anymore."_

_I had the feeling you were talking about Lily, although I knew it wasn't like that._

_You, the wise Gryffindor, could erase her? Do you know how? I gave up on that a long time ago._

* * *

_In general, I'd say he looks better, Harry. He's eating, without much appetite that's true, but he's eating something. When he's in the mood he lets me try and heal his forehead's mark. How could I allow them to do something like that to him? If I had called my Patronus before he wouldn't bear that mark. Harry, I don't want to imagine how he feels when he sees it in the mirror; he doesn't take off the bandages from his head unless I go to heal him. The cuts don't bleed anymore, nor are they infected, but he doesn't remove the bandages and I feel so guilty about that._

_He can't go on his way wearing that on his face. Now there are three of us: my arm says I'm a _mudblood_, your hand says you're a liar and his forehead say he's a traitor. There must be a way to heal this; given that I have so much free time I'll research, maybe I'll get him to help me, right?_

_Hermione J. Granger._

* * *

Hermione was unusually busy; she had gone out to buy a dozen of books and read eagerly, underlining thing and writing things down now and then.

Snape left to the kitchen, seizing the fact that the girl seemed to have forgotten his presence. When he got there he found the Ministry's owl standing on the window; it opened its wings slightly when it noticed the human and flew to the table.

It carried several letters attached to its leg, almost every one of them for Granger, except one written by Minerva for him. He casted it aside and dedicated himself to poke the girl's mail. A Slytherin never abandoned a chance to seize information he could use later to blackmail someone. In his letter, Potter gave her details about the trial, while Ginevra Weasley seemed unable to put her mind in anything besides Potter. He left Weasley's letter to the end; he wanted to amuse himself with others' idiocy. But he couldn't finish it: the redhead started with Quidditch's stupidities and joke spells he'd learnt in his brother's shop, but then the words shifted to intimate, corny phrases; Weasley awkwardly found tons of adjectives to address Granger. He was grimly surprised, for the redhead knew how to talk to women; he mentioned Granger's voice, he said it hung on him for a long time, talking about something like a ball of light that had perforated his chest and about future's certainties.

Snape had scarce knowledge about romanticism, and even then he could see the clear, strong intentions of Weasley to drag Granger to those domains.

He stopped reading, suddenly filled with an annoying itch. It always happened to him when he found couples kissing between the castle's pillars or hidden under tree's shadows. A shot of rage always came through him that lasted for a moment and then dampened in his throat, leaving him with a scab of resentment. He hated seeing others loving each other, he turned his head to avoid looking at them and despised them, as if they were felons or scandalous exhibitionists.

Possessed by an inner, illogical fire, he cut the letter by half. When he saw what he had done, far away from being anguished, he kept on tearing the letter until no phrase stood together. With perverse satisfaction, he burnt the small pieces on the stove and threw the ashes down the sink.

The Weasley git could send another thousand letters; no one would miss the one he had just disposed of.

That afternoon he didn't want to talk to Granger; the distance she had managed to shorten opened a bit again, like a wound between them.

* * *

_The most unsurmountable distance is time itself. How many light years are you away from me? How many impassable hours stand between your memory and my present? Our bond is undone, I'm separated from you irretrievably this time, like a piece of you that yearns for yourself._

_That's what I am, a piece of you, a fragment of your eternal, green gaze._

_Without you, no context determines me._

_I would have to eradicate you from my memory to live, but you understand I can't do that, that I don't want to, I'd rather die in your never-ending absence._

_I'm not going to let you go, I'll go blind if I do, I'd be lost._

_You are the measure of all things._

* * *

Snape looked out the window; through the curtain he could barely distinguish the winter dusk's sullen light. Granger got close with a book in hand; she had managed to reach him once using books and was planning on doing it again. And yet, the man's gaze of absolute resentment made her hesitate.

"Goodnight, Professor. Would you like to read something with me?"

"No."

"The other day you seemed to have a good time."

"Piss off," his gaze was still fixed out the window.

Granger's eyes went astray, looking everywhere, without deciding if she should leave or try again.

"How have your scars been? And the bite, did it close? You haven't let me see it," she made several questions while coming closer until she stood next to the sofa. She put the book on the table; no one answered her. "Professor Snape?"

"Do you just don't understand I want you to leave?"

"I didn't come here to bother you, I just wanted to keep you some company. Even I almost can't stand this confinement, without talking to anyone…"

Black eyes narrowed with hate; Snape's mouth curved in a dark gesture.

"I'm not here to entertain you."

"I know."

Hermione studied him attentively; she could sense something was not right, the Potion Master was exuding a hostile, tense aura that she hadn't perceived in a long time, and she didn't know why it had resurfaced.

The man suddenly turned his head, watching her directly. Hermione flinched unconsciously, as if someone had tried to strike her.

_I don't like when you look at me like that, Granger. I'm not a specimen to be analysed, and especially not by a moron like you. Piss off._

"Why are you angry with me? I don't even know how I offended you."

"Piss… off."

Hermione took her book from the table, frowning. She wanted to express her outrage with her gaze, but Snape was looking again out the window.

"You shouldn't treat people like that."

A growl came from the crouching lump on the sofa.

Granger stood next to him for a few more minutes, thinking about everything, without knowing what to say, how to act. Even when feeling so offended, she couldn't stop worrying about the man. She wondered, with relentless curiosity, what had Snape lost, and why was Harry hiding it?


	16. Rain of Words

**Disclaimer**: Everything you recognise belongs to Rowling and Gato Azul.

* * *

**16\. Rain of Words**

How could they fill the days' emptiness?

Hermione looked for him in the aphonic house, in the dim-lighted rooms, and sat next to him with curious, prudent gazes.

Snape kept on silent, walking slowly and peeping through the windows; he always seemed to be waiting for someone, and Granger got close to the mystery of what had the man lost, and she wondered if, when he looked outside, he thought about it, if he remembered his loss, whatever it was.

Something had been taken from him, that was obvious. Snape didn't smile, didn't seem at peace nor complete, she had always noticed that since she was a child. A happy person didn't try to hurt anyone, and Snape always hurt anyone within his reach. Neville, Harry, her.

And yet, when she imagined his loneliness, she started to forgive him.

He didn't talk, just ruminated over his secret moments, crouched on the couch, bitterly grimacing. Thinking.

Had he been like that all his life?

Hermione remembered the few memories she had of him, his years alone in the dungeons, surrounded by cauldrons and vials and dark, dissected creatures. She could see him sitting behind his desk, writing rude comments on the Gryffindor's essays, supporting himself against the cold, stone walls, always in silence, always alone.

To think about that overwhelmed her. What did someone become after living so many years alone? A beast, an outcast, a hermit.

And she slowly understood that the hate Snape threw to everyone had had a lot of time to ferment, to turn even more poisonous.

* * *

Snape went to the mail Granger had left on the window. The trustful Gryffindor abandoned the letters that she'd written on furniture next to the window, so Orestes got in and took it with his beak. She also left a small can with water and another one with owl's food. She was sure he wouldn't touch her letters. Critical mistake, to take a Slytherin's fidelity by granted. Snape smiled to himself with irony, he wasn't to blame; after all, she was the one to blame for leaving him the chance to infiltrate in her private notes.

He'd been reading the writings the Gryffindor sent to each other for several days, and yet the letter McGonagall had sent him was still unopened. In some of the messages he had read, Potter told Granger to make him read the letter and answer McGonagall back; of course, Granger had tried, but being already on guard Snape didn't yield a bit. He wasn't going to ease the old witch's conscience.

The bushy girl had written letters to Potter, Ronald and Ginevra Weasley. Snape only read the one addressed to his nemesis; at least he said interesting things, unlike the two Weasley kids.

The Granger girl was upstairs in her room; she barely left these last days, she seemed to be working on something. He sometimes looked through the half-opened door and found her sitting and reading with deep attention, taking rushed notes.

She was always teaching herself something.

He unfolded the letter with great care, so there was no evidence someone else had read it.

_Dear Harry,_

_I read your last letter; I tried to convince him, but you know how he is. Poor professor McGonagall, I can't imagine how she must be feeling, she shouldn't worry anymore: she's not at fault and the professor will be fine from now on._

The Potion master scowled; the wise, mediator Granger, always finding the best solution for everyone. With a growl, he restarted his lecture somewhere else in the page.

_… __we only see a small part of what they are, only an instant of the true length of their lives. Have you thought of that, Harry? We only met him during his classes, barely a few minutes on a hallway or in the Great Hall. I think about all the other things we didn't see and that he lived. I can't forget his screams. Sometimes I think I hear them and I get up to see if he's okay. How can I explain the solitude I feel when I watch him snooze on the couch? I blame myself for having been so blind; maybe we were too young to realize what was really happening around us._

He stopped for a few moments, upset. The idea of Granger watching him from the threshold while he slept made him shiver. He wouldn't have imagined it. He told himself that the habit of reading foreign letters was quite beneficial, and useful.

_… __he doesn't talk to me about anything, I've told him all I can think about myself, I've tried to break the barrier that I feel is in between us, but I can't, Harry. I can't reach him and I can't help him. He doesn't believe me, doesn't trust me, and I get it. Who am I to him, after all? You at least mean something, but me? I'm just an annoying, intrusive student that he had to tolerate. During all these years at Hogwarts we barely exchanged two words, he rarely looked at me. Our biggest interactions were me, raising my hand, and him, telling me to shut up._

_… __I want to help him, I want to save him, Harry, I'm not even sure why; I suddenly feel like I have to, there's no one else for him except us. The neglect he has lived in is so big, it hurts me by just looking at him, it scares me to think about someone having to live like that. What will happen to him? When I think about his life, about what his life could've been, about all of us, turning our backs to him… Do you get what I'm trying to say? I want to help him, Harry, I want him to take the hand I'm offering him, I want him to talk to me, to look at me as if we were equals._

_We're so lonely here, I sometimes find myself yearning for his company, but he refuses. I miss you and Ron and my parents. Harry, I miss you so much, write to me, I need your voice in my mind, I need to recognize you behind the lines I read._

_Your best friend, always._

_Hermione J. Granger_

Snape had a hard time deciding to let that card rest between Orestes's hooves.

* * *

Granger was waiting for him on the kitchen table, with a cup of coffee in front of her hands. He had to admit that she, who he couldn't even consider a friend, was the only person he had left.

"Good evening, professor. How are you?"

Snape looked from above without answering. He sat in front of her and started to eat. The only noise one could hear in the house were the plates' clink.

The yellowish light of the lamp gave the room a depressive tenor. Hermione could barely avoid shrinking under the silence.

She noticed with discomfort and surprise that Snape watched her furtively on several occasions. His eyes got so still it was very hard not to notice it; his gaze had weight, like a couple of rocks.

They barely exchanged words during dinner; when they finished eating the Occlumens left again in silence.

At least his gaze had got him closer for a few seconds, at least he wasn't completely lost for her.

* * *

_I looked at him sideways and he looked at me and we looked at each other._

_We looked at each other, I fully met his huge nose, the dangerous, bold curve that bent. Have you noticed, Harry, that his upper lip is darker than the lower one? I'm sorry, I know you don't care, I actually wouldn't care either if his face wasn't the only human face I've seen in weeks._

_He seems less sullen lately, maybe he read professor McGonagall's letter and that calmed him down. He still doesn't talk much to me, but he doesn't ignore me, he follows me with his eyes until I leave the room._

_I think there's hope of erasing our marks. I've been practising with some fruits which I cut with dark magic and then I try to close the marks. I haven't achieved it completely, but I can diminish the gap's size. Maybe it's just a matter of time. With some luck, no one will see that on his forehead and you and I won't have a scar anymore._

* * *

He had few interactions with Granger. She was isolated in her books, she didn't chase him to talk about cats or oral hygiene, didn't insist that he taught her occlumency anymore (he'd never put a weapon like that in Granger's eyes, they were uncomfortable even without the ability to pierce him).

He waited in the living room most of the days, waited for the night, slept and woke up to keep waiting. In vain, because he knew there was nothing out there that he could find. He had been already ripped out from the world. That was why he read Granger's letters, to be the mere viewer of a life's events, of a true life, not like his.

The girl's letters boiled inside him, like bitter, hot potions. He waited, feeling the silence pulsating in his temples, for her to address him, for her hand to write his name somewhere in the page.

He existed because she addressed him. A strange jolt overtook his body when he reached that part of the writing.

_Professor Snape ate the whole plate today and he seems more upbeat._

Then he wondered why she paid any attention to those details, which not even he noticed.

Every day he intentionally committed the crime of taking the letters and reading them, but it was hers that he was more eager to devour; with time he had stopped reading Potter's and despised Weasley's, throwing them aside, disgusted as he imagined his verbiage full of insipid romanticism.

He read them as if he needed Granger to tell him again the same itinerary of their joint days. The brunette wasted her hours with those manuals and he, who had disregarded her conversations, now looked for them, to steal them from the wooden bureau, from Orestes' hooves, as if he was a vagabond looking for crumbs.

When he watched her pass his side, or found her walking around the next room, an annoying longing for separating his lips gnawed him. But he never yielded. Granger distractedly touched him with her complicit eyes and smiled with fear. Air collapsed in his throat and she remained a bit longer, like a vision from the past, and went away without him letting out any noise.

Then he looked for her in the letters, where he didn't have to say or risk anything, just taking Granger's words and appropriating them and covering and filling himself with them.

Only scraps of lines to patch his loneliness, only Granger.

Life was sometimes almost intolerable to him; he thought about Lily and descended one more level in the pain scale.


	17. Road of Verbs

**Disclaimer**: You know the drill, guys.

* * *

**17\. Road of Verbs**

Through the letters she was forming in his mind, clearing up like a map's image, taking shape, settling in a figure he could barely see, as if he was looking an unknown land from above.

He could see Hermione Granger.

Through her writing, he knew what she was thinking, what her close friends said, to whom she talked as if she'd talk to herself. She didn't hide anything to Potter; the trust she had on him seemed to hold her entire being.

Hermione Granger had learned to take off her masks. Something he could never do.

Granger was truthful in everything she did, almost as if the movie of her short life spread on the parchment. He knew the name of the neighbourhood she had grown in, he knew the ways she addressed Potter, he knew that she spent hours in her room trying to find the counter-spell to erase their marks. The apprehensions inside him increased with each day and each verb and each loving postdate

_Wishing to see you soon._

What had he done with his life expectancy?

_You friend, always._

How had he managed to ruin everything so conclusively?

_Thinking about you and Ron._

And who thought about him anymore?

_Dear Harry…_

Always Potter, always Potter instead of him. Showing up to take Lily away from him, to die with her and reborn again as a young boy, with the eyes that had shielded him before, like mocking him. Now he had in his face what he had wanted the most in the world. How many times he had wanted to rip those bloody eyes out, they shouldn't have been his. The unbeatable, green gaze on the eyes of his enemy, like another weapon against him, like a declaration of definite victory.

He hated Potter.

_Dear Harry…_

She shouldn't love him; why only him? Why always him?

* * *

_In the threshold, a yellow light drew wings on you; you didn't realize it. Sharp for some things, blind for others. Am I one of the dark corners you don't see? Wise Granger, saint Granger, the place you ___can't _go, not even with all your books and collection of monologues._

The professor was sitting on the couch as almost always; it was weird that he had been following me from the beginning and didn't try to ignore me. I smiled without intending to, I was happy and almost couldn't hide it. I had something good to tell and give him. Finally, I had something good for him, something to offer.

_And you smiled, what could have caused that reaction from you? I didn't smile at you, I never do, not even when I should, not even to stop the awkwardness and tensions that surround us when we're close._

_There was no reason for your smile, I don't want to see you smile; deep down, it is not me who you're giving your gesture. You'll never reach me, Granger; your stretched mouth is not enough. Look at me, look at the kind of man I am. Do you think that's enough?_

He turned his head away, haughty, like in my memories as a child. But I don't have the same fear, even if it baffles and anguishes me to think about him too much.

I walked to his right side; he was raising his head with smugness and barely looked at me, with the same disdain that he used for you. It reminded me of so many things.

I called him and smiled again, it wasn't my intention; I know he doesn't like me and it doesn't matter that I try to seem friendly. But I really had something valuable for him, Harry, and for you too. We don't have to walk with the stigma others gave to us.

I asked for him to remove the bandage from his head. His expression was mocking and sceptic, so I asked again, I wasn't playing around. He took it off with distrust and watched me, always with that resentful glow and that disdain.

But it didn't matter, Harry; I was going to erase what they did to him. I put my wand between his eyes, and he raised his brow and from his throat rose a sardonic laugh, which made me nervous. But I only watched his face's cuts and I forgot about him and the fact that, if I failed, he would insult me.

The gaps on his skin tightened, met each other, side with side.

_You are not a liar._

My hand trembled a lot; my wand aimed badly at his gaze, I had never done a spell like that, my arm stiffened. I felt it warm, as if I was doing some sport, I couldn't bend my fingers, they were paralysed in their position.

_I don't care about my blood; she doesn't know about my parents, she didn't know being their daughter doesn't make me dirty, she didn't have any right to mark me._

The lines disappeared, Harry! A reddish trace remained, but nothing could be read anymore.

I did it. In the future, Harry, no one will be able to hurt someone else like that, tattooing a sentence.

The professor shouldn't have been in their hands. At least now he won't have to remember that every time he looks at himself. Maybe, Harry, with time, you can forget too, maybe with this same spell, I can erase the bolt from your forehead. Would you like to, Harry?

Would you like to start over?

* * *

_I heard you getting close, you were there, even if I didn't see you. You smelled… what did you exactly smelled of? Vanilla, almost entirely like that. Nothing creative from your part, I must say._

_You kept on smiling, but I know it wasn't for me, but for some thought in your mind. Suddenly I felt rabid. You made me take off my bandage, you were going to play lab again with me. I don't like that, Granger; for your good, you should understand it soon._

_Your wand pointed at me just like many others during my lifetime. I remember that, in these situations, I raised my head and found the Dark Lord's face or some other Death Eater's, never, never a face like yours._

_Everything has changed and it seems I won't be able to adapt this time; I don't have what it takes anymore. I don't have a reason anymore._

_"It doesn't matter what I become nor what I have to give, I'll secure the goal," I told myself, but that doesn't have meaning anymore. My world, the world that mattered to me, was gone._

_How are you going to reach me? How are you going to cross the gap? I dare you to do it._

_You shivered; I heard you breathe as if you were choking. I felt my skin expand, it seemed like it would tear like a fragile fabric; I fisted my hands until I buried my nails. I saw you; that expression, in particular, is the thing I recognise the most about you, that confirmation of your intelligence and talent. You seemed surprised about being right, but not too much, deep down you're always waiting to be right. You always are, sooner or later. I don't need to see myself to know there are no more words on my forehead. You tell me that with your big, shiny eyes, with your chest full of air, swelled by an emotion you quiet down, and a booming laugh._

_Your small, undercover celebration doesn't surprise me, you love to prove you're a wise Gryffindor. I wasn't wrong when I nicknamed you._

_But what happened after… not that, you shouldn't have dared._

_You hand caressed my forehead; I almost jumped from the couch and you removed your fingers. Your gaze was unexplainable, it seemed to reach the whole room and pass through me. What did you think, Granger? It was so brief, occlumency was too slow._

_Sometimes I can barely tolerate you. You and your peculiar way of boldness, which paradoxically ends up being almost demure._

_You removed your hand, looking at me. I hate when you look at me like that, I can't stand anyone looking at me like that. I grimaced, but you spoke before me, as is your habit._

"Clean, now you can start over."

_You see my emptiness as a blank page, not like the hole it is to me. You fill my useless hours with your letter's ink, with your anecdotes and affections._

_But you're wrong. How can this frontier be the beginning and not the end? It can't be, I don't want it to be. I don't want you to pull through, I don't want you to reach me, but you keep going, sure of yourself, on the air, over the abyss. I don't even feel the wish to stop you. Don't break the void, Granger, don't remove the swamp._

"Have a good night, professor Snape."

_You always end up being right._

* * *

It wasn't enough anymore with Granger's letters, which he read furtively. That morning he took from the bureau the writings that had arrived for her and he read it one by one; Weasley's carried the merit of clenching his teeth.

He talked about dates on Diagon Alley and encounters in the Burrow, of chimneys and sweet buns. The letter burnt with a match and went in ashes to the sink. At the same time, Hermione's writing never reached Ronald Weasley's open hands, it didn't even reach Orestes' claws.

Snape had decided on remaining there, in between words, on retaining them, lighting them on fire. Like a hole of silence.

There would be no ice creams on Sunday's morning, there would be no warm brown eyes for him, no couple's walks in Autumn.

Kisses on paper would tear apart in his hands.

He didn't care about being horrible, he had always been like that. Granger was the only guilty one, Granger and her insolent kindness. Her condescending talks. He didn't need her compassion; he could be the same scorpion he'd been his whole life if he wanted to, and she had managed to provoke him. If she liked to play with snakes, she'd have to learn to resist venom. Besides, Weasley was a moron; the idea of him going around with her, laughing like a child, irritated him. If he couldn't be happy, why Weasley could? What right did he have of claiming a happiness others couldn't reach? What made him and Potter so superior?

He had saved their lives, and would make them pay a small part.

* * *

Hermione had made pancakes for breakfast. Snape entered the kitchen and looked at the trays, debating between surprise and outrage. She hadn't been expecting a word of thanks, the mere fact of seeing his uncovered forehead was enough to please her.

"How have you been, professor?"

A casual question asked as she took the fork to her mouth. The man hesitated before sitting in front of her and reaching for a plate. He raised his brow as an answer.

"There's almost no mark left," she whispered, watching his pale forehead, the languid gaps that had before been furiously red cuts. The Occlumens was sipping his coffee. Her hands reached his frown, almost fulminated by a fear that was born in her path to the white skin. But she didn't back off and could feel the Occlumens startling at being brushed. His dark eyes were hovering over her, like asteroids. She barely touched the faded scars and pulled her hand away, chiding herself for her crazy idea.

"It seems good."

Snape swallowed the food he had on his fork. They kept on eating, submerged in deep aphonia. Hermione perceived with unease that Snape kept looking at her.

"Is everything okay, professor Snape?"

_Is everything okay, Miss Granger?_

"Yes, sir," she answered, still surprised, not knowing if the man was trying a new way of bothering her or if he was really starting a civilized conversation. Nevertheless, her eagerness to talk had a chance to be satiated and she took the risk of starting a dialogue with the Legilimens.

"You know, I've been reading about Potions, maybe you've heard about the catalysing effect that Wild Dagga's roots have on energizing potions and I'd like to know your opinion."

Snape looked at her for a few moments, with his face eerily blank. But then he answered with his mental voice, just as he'd have done in class. His explanation was long and it completely solved Hermione's doubts; she put on Snape's eyes all the focus she could muster, taking the phrases from the dark eyes and storing them in her memory. Somehow, receiving a monologue with Occlumency was much more efficient and easier to understand than being listened in a normal way. She could feel the rivers of information Prince had inside his mind; at some points she even seemed to sense some details she didn't know before their mind contact. Her enthusiasm for learning had rekindled when facing a teaching method she hadn't experienced before. So, against all hope, she dared to repeat her question.

"Professor? Please, could you mentor me in Potions?"

The man kept a prudent, thoughtful silence for a few moments.

_Have you noticed there are no cauldrons or ingredients? Do you pretend I teach you using the kitchen pots and weeds from the yard?_

"Occlumency, Professor Snape. Couldn't you transmit me even practical knowledge using it?"

The half-blood suddenly lifted his chin and scrutinised her, with that malicious air only a Slytherin had before making a deal.

"And what's in for me?"

Hermione seemed disconcerted.

"What do you want?"

Prince raised his brow; Jean could already see a sarcastic comment coming from him.

_What could I want from you? Forget it, I'll teach you in exchange for killing time, but don't interrupt me while I speak; if you do it, your lessons will be over._

Hermione rushed to nod, almost like a scolded toddler.

* * *

Those Potion's class were nothing like those hours under Hogwarts' roof breathing burnt, smelly vapours. There weren't any juvenile noises, nor paper birds, nor Neville Longbottom's constant whimpers, shrunken against his charred cauldron.

From those whispering sessions remained Granger and Snape, sitting one in front of the other, just looking at each other, as if they were fighting with their eyes. The man reclined on the couch, the girl sat on a mat. Sometimes the classes were in the kitchen and they were interrupted so Prince could drink his coffee.

When they were over, Granger went running upstairs to empty her filled mind on a notebook, so she wouldn't forget anything. Then, back to his loneliness, the man rubbed his nose's bridge and thought about the letter he'd stolen that morning and the peculiar habits of his bushy pupil. In one of his letters, Ronald Weasley had called her 'chatty' in hidden fondness and he couldn't stop thinking about that. Had he ever addressed Lily with a term of endearment? Most likely no.

* * *

Snape didn't make an effort to calculate the exact hour when he had to go down to breakfast if he didn't want to meet Granger. They met each other, now without neither of them trying to avoid the other's presence. She served him coffee; on occasions, she lifted the empty plate close to the Potion Master's hand and smiled slightly. Granger didn't know the magnitude of her actions; Snape's face wasn't easy to read, after all. She couldn't see the shadow she created in his dark eyes.

With the passing of mental voices, with her progress like smoke and echoes, Granger's knowledge multiplied and Snape seemed more and more like a human being. In some extraordinary occasions, he had even greeted her with something close to cordiality.

Hermione saw those eyes even in her dream's veils. Like two bright lights, fixed, round pupils, moons, planets, full of spatial blackness, of empty infinity. The man of his past, the abrupt, violent professor, was shifting to something else.

One day she confessed they had stolen some ingredients from his shelves; the half-blood had smiled sardonically, he already knew it. She also told him, with some shame, that she had lightened up his cloak during that Quidditch Tournament; he didn't answer, just looked at her eerily, deeply.

Hermione would've liked to have the power to guess what words swam on each occasion he kept silence.

* * *

_Could we be friends, after all? Despite ourselves?_

_I'm not afraid of exposing myself again, even if he ends up being mean with me, don't you think it's worth it? I know you would, Harry, and I want to achieve that, for him and you._

_I know professor Snape is dangerous, I know I haven't been close to someone like him before. But there's something, that you know better than anyone, that had made Dumbledore and you, my best friend, to want to preserve his life. So there must be a part of him worth it. Can he start over like all of us? He can be someone different this time, if he wants to, if he has the strength to recover, and I think, Harry, that he does, deep down. Snape is full precisely of that, strength._

_We could be friends: we like Potions, we're annoyed by mediocrity, we're stubborn (I admit it). Ron and I didn't have half of those coincidences and now look at us. In the past I wouldn't have believed I'd be trying something like this, I thought Snape was hopeless, that with him everything would end in inevitable disaster (I mean yelling and irate fights). I hope I was wrong._

The half-blood folded the letter carefully and put it back in its envelope, without leaving trails of his fingers on it.


	18. The Floating Rose

**Disclaimer**: Nothing belongs to me. All rights to Rowling and Gato Azul.

* * *

**18\. The Floating Rose**

"Why, Professor Snape?"

"Why what, Miss Granger?"

The brunette softly dragged her eyes over his face.

"Why did you help Harry? Why did you betray Voldemort? Wouldn't have been better for you to stay on his side?"

"Do you think so?"

The girl left her tea on the table and gazed back to the sullen afternoon.

"Being a double spy is to be at a complete disadvantage."

The man had pursed his lips slightly. He was watching her from the corner of his eyes, chin half-raised; he seemed interested in the question.

"If you had to speculate, what would you say?"

Hermione knew that situation had only two possible solutions: either know the half-blood's motives or end up covered in insults.

"Harry mentioned once that his father had saved you. Maybe you did it to settle the score?"

The Master Potions frowned like a bad omen.

"I don't owe anything to that moronic James Potter; of course, the glorious, surviving boy didn't tell you the whole story."

Hermione avoided that sharp gaze, taking refuge in her cup of tea.

"Another bright idea, know-it-all?"

The girl almost drowned in the sweet liquid as she shrugged. Then her eyes met the man, studious and attentive, but didn't seem able to find what she was looking for.

"I don't get it, professor Snape. I'm missing a piece."

To her irremediable disconcert, Snape showed one of his sardonic, sinister smiles. She felt as if the traitor was putting her in the middle of a game she didn't want to be in.

"Exactly, you're missing a piece and you'll keep missing it. Can't you find it by yourself? I'm disappointed, Granger."

The girl stood up, picking up the dirty plates. She knew the best strategy was to ignore the ill-intended comments, but Snape had something challenging and provocative in him. She couldn't manage to leave his storms of sarcasm and mocks unscathed.

"Harry said you lost something; I think Voldemort took it away from you. I think it's strongly related to precisely Harry, maybe he took away the same thing from both of you and somehow you—"

She hadn't been watching him, but when she put the plates on the sink and turned to him, her voice stuck in her throat. Snape hadn't ever looked at her like that before, as if he was looking at someone else, or more like, as if he had been looking at her for the first time, truly looking at her. As if he was removing veils or cloaks. She knew she had touched him, that she had reached a distant part of him. The wizard's nostrils were dilated with fury.

"What's wrong, Granger, the cat took your tongue? Your mental power left you? I thought you were going to explain my life to me."

"No, I was just—"

"Draw conclusions about your own business."

"But you—"

The dark, sombre frame suddenly stood up. Hermione walked backwards when the man got close to her darkly, until he stood in front of her.

"You know nothing."

Then, the shadow over her head disappeared as the Potion Master left the room.

* * *

Granger had been intolerably close. So much that Lily's name had throbbed in his temples as he heard her talk; if he let the conversation stretch, she would find out the truth, with the easy, perfect, final piece of the puzzle.

So dangerously close, so tantalizing close. What would Granger think of him if she knew the truth?

What would she think if he let her see and feel the nights of interrogatories, of mud, shivers and fear? All of that for Lily, who would never give him what he was looking for. What would Granger do?

He fell asleep on the sofa, after ruminating for a long time.

Granger was waiting for him in the depths of his mind. There she knelt, weightless and absolute. She kissed his hands, touched his hair, the same one everyone accused of being greasy. Him, the awful, weird Snape kid, the Slytherin's skinny viper, the evil snitch that had revolted Dumbledore.

He wanted to laugh at them, all those haughty faces he remembered. Worthy Granger dampened his hands with her kisses; Potter and the rest of them could burn. He let her caress him, gloated with it. The worthy, inestimable witch of Gryffindor…

He opened his eyes, stunned by his vileness. To dream about a young lady, about her in particular, was absurd and abhorrent. The worst thing of all was the fact that his chest was on fire, that on the back of his hands he could almost feel the vexing, pleasant brush of those fake kisses, and that he would have wanted to go back to sleep.

* * *

_Things are changing, Harry. I interrupted Snape before because of an uncontrollable impulse. Just after I finished talking I regretted doing it, because I knew what was coming, because I knew his touches of sarcasm and humiliations. With the years I stopped fearing him little by little, but now few of my fears remain; I'm getting used to Snape, to his long lectures so similar to mine, to his taste for hot, bitter coffee, to his company, that's turning more ordinary with time. Snape can yell and become enraged, and then what, Harry? Then nothing. When I think about that, I remember Dumbledore, the careless tone he used with him that maybe Snape had ended up accepting with a familiarity it doesn't concern any of us. I'm not Dumbledore, that's true, but maybe we could reach a tranquil point, friendly, in our chats._

_At least I want to try._

* * *

Hermione told the Potion Master most of the big adventure of the first year they spent at Hogwarts. She even told him what she'd thought when she first saw him. Snape repeated over and over again those words in his mind.

_You seemed so tall, and your voice was the deepest I've ever heard. I thought you were a really intelligent professor; I was dying for you to see how smart I could be. But you never recognized anything good in me, and you will never do it, right?_

The girl had asked him with a slight smile of resignation.

_Some things never change._

But Snape wanted more; he wanted more compliments, more unilateral chatter, more of her and her voice.

Sometimes, in his mental dusks, in his sullen thoughts, he wanted to tell her everything and memorize every morphing second in her expression, her wet eyes, her trembling lips, her weak voice.

_Professor Snape, you did all of that? How could you?_

To bathe in her full respect and admiration, only addressed to him. Granger's kindness was truthful and carried a fraternal intention. But it wasn't enough, it left him even more thirsty and rabid, it forced him to drink tons of frustration.

In many occasions, when reading Granger's handwritten letters to that redhead Weasley, he was filled with the urge of strangling the boy.

* * *

Hermione went upstairs to write, in the cosiness of her room, every one of the advices about Potions she had learnt that afternoon. She turned her head for a second as one of her feet went to the next step.

Down there Snape was watching her, his fiery eyes setting up a fire inside her, sinking in, tearing her apart in an unprecedented way. Her arms trembled slightly, and without thinking about it, she kept on walking, running away recklessly. She didn't know what that meant, but suddenly to think about the fact that she was alone with that man made her uneasy. There was something in the half-blood that hadn't been there before, something like a revelation in his eyes, a spark; vague, brief lighting.

She sensed with fear that something had changed between them, that the air had been filled with a dense, unknown substance. And it was because of Snape. He was the vortex from where those strange fumes came from.

* * *

_Severus, dear Severus, even if you can't believe me (and I don't blame you), I have to ask you to forgive me. I didn't know what I was doing, I didn't know who was behind your impenetrable face, I didn't know who was I attacking before and I ask you, I beg you, please look at me, look at me inside your mind and tell me if you really think I'd have hurt you, even knowing the truth. I wouldn't have done it. I raised my wand against the man that sold us out and murdered Dumbledore, not against my undercover pupil. Not against you, but against what you pretended (very convincingly) to be. I can't express the depth of my regret and my sleepless remorse. I just hope, with all the agony I'm capable of, that you may listen to me. You know I'm not a woman of many words, the only thing that I can give you is:_

_Forgive me, please forgive me, I am so sorry. If I could change what you have lived, what I have told you, if I could burn my own phrases and my insults, I would gladly do it. But I can't, I shouldn't  
_

_Forgive me for not trusting you, for accepting you as my enemy, forgive me for being unable to recognize the true man you're hiding._

_I am sorry about what I have said and done. Dear Severus, please forgive me._

_Once your professor, proud of having been so, and ashamed of having failed you,_

_Minerva McGonagall_

* * *

_Let me get the boy._

Hermione opened her eyes; in her dreams, Snape was asking the Dark Lord to let him go after Harry. She remembered clearly the clean, horrible scream she heard. In her brain, the image of the dark body falling to his death repeated over and over again.

When she saw him laying over his own blood, to think he had died, she didn't feel any kind of sorrow. She was relieved to know that he wouldn't exist anymore, that he wouldn't be there to set them up again. She was even a bit satisfied; to hear him begging for an opportunity to get Harry had ended up destroying any kind of piety she might have for him.

Severus Snape was extinct, and while she wasn't celebrating it, she could consider it a lucky, acceptable fact.

She went downstairs like a robot, watching the inside of the Shrieking Shack, instead of the small hallway she was entering. Snape was standing next to the table that was in the living room; his grieving, skinny frame made her remember the past. How weird was life, and how compassionate was on some occasions too. The fact that he was there, just a few meters from her, was an undeniable miracle.

"How are you, Professor Snape?" she asked him; the memory of the dying Master Potion on the floor numbed the air in her lungs.

And to think they were willing to abandon his body in the middle of the dark, with the blood still warm in his body. And to think he could be underground instead of a few steps away.

"How are you?"

She touched his shoulder to see if he was alive, that they hadn't lost him that night. She touched his shoulder to calm the guilt and make peace with him.

Prince, very slowly, turned his head, clumsily; he seemed drunk, or hurt.

"Are you okay?" Granger's face showed worry.

"I took a potion to eliminate the tr—tr…"

_Traces of poison from my system. It's normal, they always had this effect, but it's temporal and harmless._

"You don't look so good."

The man smiled darkly, joyless.

"Do you think I normally look good?"

Granger seemed surprised by the question; she didn't pay him much attention and took him by the arm to the couch so he could lay down.

"I meant you seem deteriorated."

_Everything will be better once the poison is gone._

The black eyes missed when they tried to focus on her; they were covered by a wet cloak, shrunken, weak.

"I'm going to bring you something to drink, you really don't look good," she took his shoes off, alarmed to see he didn't fight her off or insult her.

"Are you my mother, Granger, or you just suddenly want to be a nurse?"

The half-blood's head descended until it rested on a cushion; the man's body seemed to relax on the couch, he went pallid and still. Granger came back running, a cup of coffee in hand.

"Everything will be better, when the poison…" he muttered between sips, eyes dull.

"What's wrong? What did you take?"

"Don't be ridiculous, it's drowsiness, it's natural. Don't be dramatic."

The cup was slipping from his fingers; Granger was afraid.

"Where did you get that potion?"

"Poppy sent it to me, it came with Minerva's package."

"You aren't lying to me?"

Snape smiled, half-mocking and half-fainting. He let go the cup completely; Granger caught it and put it on the carpet. Her arms rose to meet the man half-saggy, supported him and put him back on the cushions. The black eyes were barely open.

"Gran—ger."

He seemed delusional. Hermione touched his forehead of dry plains. The black eyes were astonished, darkly fixed, ablaze. She pulled her hand back, afraid of having done something wrong.

"Fever means the potion's working."

"I'm going to bring you some quilts. It's not wise for you to try and climb the stairs. I'll stay here with you in case you need anything."

"I'm not dying, saint Granger, protector of the sick."

"Make fun of me all you want."

Hermione rushed upstairs and took every blanket and pillow she could find to spend the night. When she got back Snape was almost asleep; he raised a hand when she covered him and put a pillow under his nape.

His confused eyes searched her between the haze; his hand was still raised, as if waiting for something.

"Do you need anything, professor?"

"Come on, Granger, it's so bloody cold. Weren't you going to bring a blanket?"

The girl put another blanket on him, sensing he wasn't completely aware of what was happening. His blue lips traced her name.

"Gran—ger. It's so cold, don't go, saint Granger…"

Hermione didn't dare take the hand he had raised; she carefully forced him to lower his arm.

"Don't talk anymore, your hallucinating."

Snape had closed his eyes; then she could openly contemplate his ugliness, his crooked teeth and huge nose, his harsh, dirty hair, the yellow tinge of his skin. Irregular teeth could be seen between the half-opened lips. She felt compassion for him and, when she overcame the initial disgust, she caressed his feverish forehead. The man shifted, suddenly startled when as he felt someone touching him.

"It's me, don't worry."

Snape muttered nonsense quietly.

"Saint Granger, protector of the sick, prodigy of the lions…"

Hermione was a bit annoyed at being mocked by a man not even completely aware of what he was saying.

"Invaluable Gryffindor, sweet Gran—ger."

Hermione flinched, kneeling on the carpet. The half-blood wasn't saying anything anymore, his exhausted lids had gone down. He shivered and he was wet, because of the fever. He didn't know what he was saying, maybe a part of some muggle prayers had come to his tongue, or some poem; he couldn't know what he was saying. Maybe that sarcasm hadn't gone as he intended. Hearing that had disturbed her, to the point it was difficult for her to fall asleep.

* * *

He didn't think necessary to drink that detox potion; many of the symptoms caused by the poison had left time ago. And yet he drank it rapidly; he knew what it was going to cause, he knew about the dizziness and the body pain. He didn't actually do it to clean his body.

He also knew she would be there if something happened to him. He drank every drip; soon his muscles loosened, and his gaze turned blurry. She was behind him and was calling for him, she sounded anguished. She took him to the couch and removed his shoes, as if he was a child. So dumb, so naïve. He didn't want to prevent anything, he let her be, with his judgment clouded by his fever and his body shivers.

Granger had given him a cup, her small hands took his, then, when he was about to fall, she grabbed his body and put him back on the couch. Snape knew what he was doing as wrong, and he didn't care; he'd drink as many potions as he could just to feel again those hands on him, that kindness. She said some things and he answered, surprised to retain his rationality. He was dizzy, she was gone, he couldn't stop trembling, his teeth smashed against each other, shivering. He closed his pained eyes for a moment, but it wasn't just a moment; by the time he woke up she'd already come back. Her hands were pulling his hair backwards, caressing his frown and forehead, his hair roots.

"It's me, don't worry."

He didn't worry; to the contrary, he'd have laughed. The feeling of the feminine fingers on his face numbed him, left him agitated and euphoric. How many years had passed since someone touched him like that? He couldn't move anymore, his body had gone completely numb and yet, he couldn't be in a more pleasant state.

Wonderful Granger, sweet Granger of the flaming prodigies.

He let his head fall backwards, knowing himself protected by the woman looking at him, beyond the velvety darkness of his closed lids.

Floating rose, pious, Granger… when could he strive for such fortune? Never, never. He'd walk over the same cyclic destiny that he thought had ended in him. He would kept on living like a predatory wolf, avid and greedy.

Being eaten on the inside by envy each time he read every single one of the letters she wrote for Weasley.

* * *

**N.T:** Did I mention this was going to be a slow burn? Because it definitely will.


	19. Bewitched Walls

**Disclaimer**: Everything you recognise belongs to Rowling and Gato Azul.

* * *

**19\. Bewitched Walls**

"I have good news, professor Snape. Today a letter came from the Ministry."

The man had already done his labour for the day, so he faked surprised by a letter he already knew about.

"The trial's last session will be in a month. Harry's anxious, you must be too."

She moved from and across the kitchen, rereading the bureaucracy writing.

"I hope he already prepared a good strategy; we need to win at all costs."

She shifted her eyes to the thin, sharp-nosed man; he seemed distant, annoyed.

"Professor Snape, if we were to lose the trial, I'll blow up Azkaban's walls myself. Harry and Professor McGonagall agree, and not even mentioning the Weasleys. You could say you have a small army by your side."

"A small pack of morons, to be more precise."

Granger frowned her lips, showing her indignation.

"Harry sent you a letter."

"I'm in ecstasy."

"I guess you won't have any inconvenience presenting in front of the jury, given you can talk as much as you did before."

"I thought we'd have more time."

"You've almost recovered, we don't need more time."

"I beg to differ; Potter's brain may have not processed the defence yet."

Hermione sat on the chair, making it squeak. She was mad at Snape's comments and wanted to let him now.

"Stop talking about my friends like that in my presence, professor."

The man crossed his arms, smiling with haughtiness and sarcasm.

"Saint Granger."

That words triggered a memory in the girl's mind, something that made her shiver slightly in her seat.

"To what point is an insult or a compliment what you say, professor Snape, not even you know it."

The man turned his head violently, his vitriolic eyes falling over her like boiling water. Hermione had to hide her face; those strange looks, and each day more frequent, were starting to make her fearful and curious at the same time.

* * *

Beyond his moments of rage, Snape was a silent confidant, almost imperceptible. She talked for hours at a time, asking him about Potions and telling him about her academic discoveries; the professor made an effort to tolerate her and listened patiently when he was in a good mood. He accompanied her to breakfast, sitting in front of her and eating in silence, glancing at her from time to time. They also read together: she sat on the carpet next to the Potion Master's couch and read out loud some interesting phrases from his _muggle_ books; she was committed on convincing him there were amazing writers in that magic-less world.

"Listen, professor: 'Books are the only place of a house where you still can be at peace'. What do you think?"

Snape looked at her for a few moments, face blank.

"True."

"I know, right?" then Granger turned her attention back to her readings. She didn't notice that the black gaze kept on hovering on her for a few more long seconds, scrutinising her.

* * *

_Why don't you answer my letters, Hermione? I'm trying to understand what did I do to make you angry at me. I found out you're still writing to Harry. Tell me what the bloody hell is going on, for Merlin, Hermione. What did I do wrong? Just spit it out, behaving like a child with a tantrum won't fix anything._

_Write to me, write to me, write to me. I'm not good at reasoning your problems, you know it, just tell me what's going on!_

_TIRED OF NOT KNOWING ANYTHING ABOUT YOU._

_Ron W._

* * *

_My dear Ron:_

_Where are you? Why haven't I received a line from you? Too busy with the store? Did they call you from the Quidditch team you auditioned for?_

_I know you don't like to write, but right now, having a letter from you in my hands would make me very happy, it'd change my week. We'll soon meet in the professor's trial. You will be there, right? I hope to see you._

_Write to me, Ron. I want to know how are you._

_I love you, you know that, right?_

_Hermione J. Granger._

* * *

Snape was more careful with Potter's writings; in one of them, he asked Granger what the motives of her breaking contact with Weasley were. Snape rewrote a part of the letter using magic and omitted the piece that gave away his interference in the Gryffindor's mail.

He was no fool, he knew what he had to do.

* * *

"What were you thinking when you asked Voldemort to let you go and find Harry?"

Snape stopped, without taking the mug to his lips.

"I had to talk to Potter."

"You needed to tell him that he was a Horcrux."

"Precisely," he took a sip of his coffee gravely, with that dignified impassivity he used on every action he did.

"You knew Voldemort would kill you. How long had you known it?"

"In fact, Miss Granger, I only sensed it. I found out at that moment, that's why I wanted to find glorious Potter."

"You weren't afraid of dying and everyone believing forever you were a traitor?"

"Why would a dead man care for the opinion of the living?"

The brown eyes blinked on him; he could vaguely see his own thoughtful, bleak reflection, blurred in the big, clear pupils.

"If you ask me, it's a horrible state… to bear guilt that isn't yours even after death. Not even one part of you wanted to tell the truth?"

The man turned his head to the window, pensive.

"Maybe, just to Potter."

Hermione was surprised, given the bad relationship between the Potion Master and Harry.

"I still hear your screams sometimes, when I'm asleep, and then I wake up afraid, thinking something bad happened to you."

"Nothing can happen to me anymore; that's one of the advantages of almost dying."

Hermione's hand crossed the way to Snape's, religiously.

"Could you consider me a friend, professor? Could you give me that chance? I'm loyal, I've proven that."

Snape took his hand away slowly, watching her while his fingers averted.

* * *

_Prodigious of the lions, sweet Granger…_

How could something like that come from Snape? Only by a delirium, fed by fever. And yet a gift of tenderness hanged from his hands since then.

_Sweet Granger._

A voice so dark, a voice of distant cello, always used to hurt, suddenly using soft words. She wasn't sure Snape had wanted to say that, but she found very pleasant to imagine that maybe, deep down, almost unconsciously, the man had learned to appreciate her, just as she had started esteem him.

* * *

_Don't think I've forgotten about you. You'll always be here, somewhere, in the constant feeling I've missed something, that I've forgotten a crucial detail._

_That someone had stolen a piece of my life, something that must have been, a past where I was happy and I can remember._

_What does she mean? I don't think you care to hear it; I was never to you what Potter was. I'll tell you anyway because I should have never hidden something from you. And I did it, so many times, until you couldn't recognize me anymore and I turned into a stranger because I kept away too many things._

_Her presence doesn't leave me alone; it's like watching your shadow, wandering around me, like watching my life's possibilities, the life I sold. I know nothing is waiting for me anymore._

_Granger is too kind and too dumb and too cruel at the same time. She has a blind spot she doesn't even know about. She thinks she's nice to others and that she's doing good, but she's wrong. Granger only does good for herself; she doesn't see from where I'm standing that her actions are nothing more than crumbs._

_Sometimes I want to tear her away from whatever she's doing, to force her to really look at me, but what would be the point, Lily? The only one capable of seeing me was Albus, and he used his knowledge of me to manipulate me._

_That bloody fool had always seen me as his toy._

_And dumb Granger says she will pull me out of Azkaban, but I'm not going anywhere. If they execute me, I'll be happy that at least my death would be useful to torment Potter's, hers and Minerva's soul._

_I'm not useful for anything now. What can I expect from Granger? Why am I even expecting anything from her? She's trying to help me, but she's so clumsy, so inexperienced, and so young…_

_The other night I took a potion. I wanted to feel Granger, I wanted her to be close, I wanted to believe in her. And I thought that, if I managed to get her close, I'd be breaking the silence of many years. Deep down maybe I just wanted to take her away from Potter and Weasley, just like the first Potter and Black took you away from me. But it's all useless; when I woke up she was asleep on the carpet. And I realize that it was the same from last night, that Granger is blind and deaf, that she doesn't realise anything. She's decades away from me._

_It would've been good to died then, I wanted to die and pretend everything was fine, that I can close my eyes and say the world and I are at peace, that she's the bridge that I have left to humanity. I wanted to die so I could torment them with guilt, so at least she could have kept the remorse. Sometimes I get so desperate though, I think I need her irremediably; other times I feel there's something in her that makes me angry._

_Everything is fictitious. Granger doesn't know me better than the first day we talked, while I think I already know her well. She's kind, but that's her nature, it doesn't actually have anything to do with me. Even if she touches me, if she brushes my forehead (why did she do that?), she doesn't get past the physical barrier, she doesn't get where you did, without needing to brush me. Even if she's next to me, the distance is too big._

_Granger is afraid of me, even if she doesn't realise it. Granger can't help me, there's something cold in her, something distant that separates her from me, she's a child. She'll never be able to see beyond._

_I'm alone in this, Lily, as I have always been._

* * *

Snape was in the living room with his eyes closed, but he wasn't sleeping. He looked like a condemned man, waiting for the rope on his neck; or maybe a sphinx, or the statue of a solemn man, dead many years before. She contemplated him from the threshold.

"What will you do when you're free, professor?"

"What do you mean with free?" he didn't move, his lids remained down.

"When we get out of here."

"I don't have any interest in getting out; I guess you're impatient. Too much time alone with a greasy bat?"

A fold of anguish formed in Hermione's brow, but Snape wasn't looking at her.

"I haven't done anything for you to believe I think that."

"Leave me alone."

"We have already left you alone too much time."

"Don't be ridiculous and go, I don't want to know you're there. Out."

Opposite to what he pretended to cause, he could hear steps getting close to him.

"I'm not leaving. I don't know why you are mad, but you should tell me. I thought things were getting better."

"What things, Granger? Your charitable project of the year? I'm not a professor at Hogwarts, I'm not going to give points to Gryffindor for you to hover around me, pretending to be a nurse."

He opened his eyes to see just in front of him the girl's furious face, taking a breath to start yelling at him too.

"You're no charitable project! If I wanted to help somebody I'd do it with the elves, they're much more vulnerable and infinitely nicer and more grateful than you. I do it because is the least you deserve from us and, even if you don't believe it, I always had esteem for you."

"Of course, that's why you set my cloak on fire!"

Hermione gasped confused and then backed off, angry.

"I was a child when I did that, and I already apologised."

"That's not the point."

"Then what is it? That you like to remember the offences against you so you can have excuses for you awful attitude?"

"You're a hypocrite, everyone is! You're here to uphold your image of good, prim girl, you insufferable, stupid brat, not because of me!"

He had assumed the girl would yell some insults as him as a retribution, but she kept quiet and looked at him for a long time. He suddenly felt angrier, because of those touched, bold eyes that looked at him as if he was an old picture.

"I don't need your pity, silly girl."

Granger tightened her lips; her face was a blurry mixture of emotions, exposed one in front of the other.

"You're wrong, professor Snape. Indeed, I didn't always like you, I'm not lying to you. When I thought you were dead I felt at peace, relieved, but I almost always trusted you, until all evidence pointed to the contrary, and you're right, at the beginning I came here to please Harry and not for you, but things have changed. Since the Death Eaters attacked us I don't have any doubt you're one of us. And I want to help you; if I hadn't gotten any closer it's because you don't let me."

The man swept her with eyes on fire, ablaze. He rose in all his height, seeming threatening and stunningly big.

"If you don't believe me, ask me anything you want, I won't hide anything."

The Potion Master raised a bow, incredulous.

"Potter had told you something about the Occlumency classes I gave him?"

Granger had turned her head and watched him carefully.

"He said you were awful and you weren't worried about him learning, one day he just stopped going and didn't talk about it again. Why is that?"

"I will ask the questions," he smoothed his clothes and raised his chin, in a very similar way as Lucius Malfoy did. "Why did you always raise your hand in my classes, no matter how much did I tell you to be quiet?"

The girl shrugged with seriousness.

"It's a compulsion. It wasn't enough to know more than the others, I wanted them to know it and recognise me for it, but they always mocked me. It's a habit I haven't been completely able to erase."

She was surprised that the man, instead of making fun of her, watched her with daunting force.

"Aren't you going to ask me something else?"

"What do you pretend to gain by doing this?"

"Nothing."

"Don't be absurd. Even for you Gryffindor, there's always something to be gained. In your case, Potter's gratitude?"

"I'm not going to lie to you. I accepted to take care of you because I didn't trust you and I didn't want to let Harry stay close without being sure. But I was wrong, we were all wrong about you, okay? I understand your anger; if Harry and Ron didn't care about what I did, if they thought I was their enemy, I…" she squeezed her sweater, nervous. "I know my head would tell me they were acting on what they see, but deep down, a piece of me maybe couldn't forgive them. I understand you hate us, but with time you have to understand that we really won't abandon you this time, even if we're not friends, we're indebted."

"It's always about Gryffindor and their honour," he reproached her bitterly. "I don't expect anything back. You're all imbeciles and couldn't do it even if you tried to."

Hermione didn't say anything else, just stood there in the middle of the living room, gloomy. And her vulnerable voice lightened up like a candle between the silence.

"If I made you a question, would you answer me sincerely? Just one."

"Why would I do that?"

"Please."

The man growled.

"Why, if you hate Harry so much, you gave it all to protect him?"

Snape looked at the corner of the room, muttering something to himself.

"This will be the only time I'll talk to you about this subject."

Hermione sharpened her hearing.

"I made a very vile, stupid mistake when I was young. If I wanted to die with a tiny bit of dignity, I would have to pay for what I had done."

In the Gryffindor's head hives of questions appeared, born out of that answer, but she knew the most prudent thing was to control her questioning impulses and accept the small revelation she had been given.

* * *

_How many times have we judged you wrong? How many times have I made the mistake of thinking I knew who you were just by the impression you gave me? Will I ever have the right to ask you to trust me?_

_Today I confessed you I always felt ugly about my teeth and my hair, and that I cried when someone mocked me and called me a bookworm, cruelly alluding my most noticeable defect._

_You snorted, I don't know if in solidarity or mockery. I feel that anything I may tell you will end up seeming childlike or immature. You, in exchange, told me you had once gone to a _muggle_ school and that kids hit you there and locked you inside closets. As you spoke, it seemed as if it was another person's life, without giving details, and with that stony, undaunted expression._

_I felt surprised, thinking about you being once a child, that a long time ago you didn't have the aggressive aplomb that makes you seem untouchable, like above a pedestal, so unreachable for all of us, who don't know how to walk with his lordship._

_Professor Snape, you know? You're one of those persons that always stuck in one's memory, because of your rareness, for some unique characteristic, in your case just by being who you are. You're the origin and the end of many mysteries._

_I wish I wasn't one of the students you most dislike, then maybe you'd tell me more things and not strictly that single revelation that ___today _we agreed we'd make. I, on the other hand, have talked for hours, so much that I made myself dizzy because I want you to know me, to know who I am._

_Actually, it's because I want to erase the prejudice you have of me and that, for once, you tell me something nice, like the other teachers used to tell me; a simple, small compliment, just like the one you made me that night (and which I don't think you're conscious of.)_

_Dear Professor Snape._


	20. Storybook

**Disclaimer**: Everything belongs to Rowling and Gato Azul. Including me.

* * *

**20\. Storybook**

On Monday, Granger talked about her analytic, sharp mind. Snape could confirm modesty wasn't always her strongest point. On Tuesday, the sharp-nosed man mumbled he had never learned how to use a broom as one should. And that was how the time arrive when it was hard to find any subject that didn't border on intimacy. Granger, quite more experienced in the act of talking, used to make long stories about any kind of events, about her life and Harry's, even sometimes about Ronald Weasley's. The Potion Master had turned out to be a comfortable listener. He only interrupted her to ask short questions and rarely diverted his gaze to somewhere else from the person's eyes who was talking to him.

One day he allowed Hermione to ask him three questions. The girl thought a bit before starting; she knew it wasn't wise to be very intrusive.

"Why were you always ignoring me when I raised my hand?"

The man grimaced.

"I did it because I found you obnoxious and wanted to humiliate you."

Hermione didn't know what to say to such blatant confession; she was just about to ask him if he found it right to take advantage of his students, but she didn't do it. She would waste her two questions trying to educate someone that couldn't be reformed.

She asked if he really hated them or if he had to fake it so the Death Eater wouldn't suspect anything. He said that, while acting was necessary, it hadn't been such an effort to him, because he really despised them.

Granger couldn't keep on asking after that, or she might have ended up slapping him again.

* * *

_Your face spoke for you; you were furious and hurt._

_But I didn't lie to you. Didn't you want the truth? Not all of us are like you, Granger; not all of us have good intentions. Why pretend to be the man you think I am? The one you want me to be._

_What will I get? Your respect, your admiration, but nothing of that is useful to me. I prefer you look at me truthfully and see for yourself, even if you run away from my presence… If that's the only thing you have for me, then it doesn't matter._

* * *

_It took me time to understand that, despite everything, the professor's behaviour could not be so wrong after all._

_He wouldn't have survived had he been a softer person, more open. They would've torn him apart. Despite hating us, or maybe because of it, he has been capable of protecting us and remaining impassable._

_But it's no longer necessary, we don't need a person like him anymore, in this new era we need persons with the will to live, and the professor is still stuck in the war and his role as a spy. Maybe he'd rather die, it seems there's nothing left for him anymore. Then I think, he needs us, I want to be one of his cornerstones, I know you want too. But I don't know how, Harry; he told me the other day we're all hypocrites, but it's not true, at least not now. I've talked a lot with him, so he understands I'm not hiding anything from him. Why don't you write him a letter? Maybe he'll read it this time._

* * *

The girl followed him to the kitchen, still yelling.

"You can't say those things, you didn't know them, you have no right to talk like that about them! Remus had just had a child and Sirius spent years locked up in Azkaban, they didn't deserve what happened to them!"

The man rose his brows while crossing his arms, petulant; sometimes he reminded her too much of Malfoy.

"You're the one who didn't know them. They were all bastards."

"Even after death, even after they paid with blood any evil they had done to you, you're still incapable of letting the past go."

"Not all of us are like you, Granger."

"What do you mean?" the big eyes shone ablaze, messy hair falling on her face.

"Not all of us care about others, not all of us have good intentions. You may hurt others, but you'll never do it with malice aforethought, you'll never plan it. Black did it, Potter too and I, of course, have always done it."

"And you think that's okay?"

"No, but I don't care."

The girl seemed overwhelmed; she shook her head repeatedly.

"I don't like what I hear. I don't know what to do with you."

* * *

_"The perfect Gryffindor girl feels disgusted?"_

_A covert black stare, some big, transparent eyes peeking in. Light swimming in the kitchen, the smell of coffee, coldness stuck everywhere in the house. _

"Don't say that."

_The man breathes tightly; the coffee is too bitter, it burns, he drinks it anyway. Something squeezes him, but he is who he is for a reason. Slow in the grey atmosphere, the woman comes close, her face is determined, hair falling over her shoulders. The tall, grieving figure doesn't let go the empty mug._

"I'm trying to lie. I won't lie to you no matter what. You're right, I've never wanted to hurt anyone, and I don't like what I'm hearing from you, but I'm not going to judge you this time."

_The pale mouth stretches, incredulous._

"Please, in return, don't judge me."

_Finally, someone puts down the mug on the table; boiling water shrieks on the stove. Again, the pale mouth smiles, ironically, bitterly._

"I'm not anyone to judge you, and I'm not here to do that."

_The clock's hand moves, a feminine hand raises, the man inhales suddenly. She has "let's start over" in her mouth. The hands meet each other, one touches the other and looks at it with the brush, discovers it, it's warm and rough. The immobile man exhales deeply again._

"I'm Hermione Jean, a pleasure," _one hand moves, nestled in the other. Warmth, smooth heat, a bird on the window. _"You may call me Hermione."

_The woman looks at the man's small mouth, the corners are slumped. The hands start to swear._

"You can't address me by my given name," _the absolute eyes blink too slowly._

"Then, Snape's fine?" _a guttural voice, noticeably grave, growls. _

_The hands let go, the bird is gone, the water is still mumbling and boiling._

* * *

_If we're friends now? We are. He speaks little, listens with patience, stares at me. Snape stares at me, sees what I do and then follows me as if he's learning how to live with company, as if he'd been alone for many years in a mountain or a desert, and I'm surprised that such an astute man could be so lacking at the same time. Do you remember when I told you about the photographs? That we only see instants of a long movie? Now that I see the rest of the film, the fleeting images get a different tone. I could say I really care about him, he was there for seven years and I couldn't see who he was, who he is._

_When, for some reason, he decides to speak, I feel fortunate, because no one else has heard his world, beside Dumbledore. How could I measure to such kind of confidant? I surely don't fill the huge hole the Headmaster left, maybe I'm a small piece in the middle of a big gap, but I believe the professor will forgive me._

_He, on the other side, manages to make me smile on the inside with a phrase of cordiality. Imagine, Harry, Snape talking to you without hate, imagine all his experience and knowledge at peace with you. I'm flattered. We're friends and I'm proud of it, happy and fearful too because I think it won't last, that someday I'll make him angry or we'll argue and everything will be over._

_I wish it wasn't like that, Harry. When Snape's voice doesn't say insults its almost beautiful, it's the most beautiful thing of his whole body. I still remember him giving us our first Potion lesson, I'll never forget that moment and what it meant. How was it, Harry? "Cheating the mind and disturbing the senses"? No, but he talked about the subtlety of the smokes and boiling cauldrons. Do you know it? I don't care about the exact phrase; I remember the atmosphere created by his voice and you, writing on your parchment. Those were such happy days together, Harry!_

* * *

Silence in the living room, furniture still and old. A very tall, very thin man is reading on the couch, the girl is sitting on the carpet. The clock's noise is like a throb; the light softens, is barely a dim ray. The storybook opens on the man's legs; the girl put it there, here clear eyes look at him with something close to love, like one would see an old memory, a father, a childhood teacher maybe. A prince turns into a beast, the girl speaks; her voice is the only thing accompanying the clock's drum. Condemned to be a beast forever and live in the castle. The man feels an emptiness in his stomach, inhales air without moving. A kind hand passes the page; there's a drawing there, red, orange and green. It smells like vanilla. Far away they can hear children playing in the street. The hands brush by accident in the middle of the page. The girl has smiled, the man let the corner of his mouth fall, he's quite serious, barely moving. Again, something squeezes his chest. _He'll be a monster forever._ She looks to the window covered with curtains, the light turns grey, the afternoon is ending. The grieving man is silent. _Belle rejected him, she couldn't marry him, but she'd stay at his side because he was a dear friend of her_. And then what? She smiles again; black eyes avoid her, they're stormy, darkened with resentment. The girl looks at them and doesn't understand. She passes the page, there's a big mirror in it. _Belle left_. It was to be expected, the man says. And the page changes again; the man wants to stand up, but a book and a pair of hands don't allow him to move. _At least finish this story_. She raises her wand and lights up a lamp, the light is orange. Vanilla's smell has conquered. Granger's hair shine, wavy on her forehead and shoulders; the man scrutinizes the curly forms and remembers someone. He wants to stand up, he's angry, he's always angry, sometimes he doesn't even know why anymore. _When she went back, the beast was dead._ Lids were raised, the lively gaze goes up to a pale, cold face. _It's almost over, you can leave if you want then._ The mouth grimaces. _The beast turned into a beautiful prince, Belle couldn't recognize him immediately. Bullshit._ She raises her head; the man's tone of voice hurts her. _There are many interpretations of this story…_ He doesn't allow her to finish, he has removed the book. _It's always about the same thing._ The girl clutches the book against her chest, looking up at him, scared by his sudden movements; she seems sad, she seems disappointed. A child laughs from far away. _Are you like Beauty, Granger? Do you absurdly wait for beasts to turn into princes?_ The girl fills her chest, the clock gives seven rings, the ray that entered through the curtains has died. The orange light is shining behind each eye, reflecting against each pupil. _No, but we sometimes see beasts where there are none._ The gloomy man makes a disgusted gesture. _I'd like to say I see beyond, but that's not true, I didn't see you; not even seven years were enough to realize what was happening_. The man's nostrils flare, the mouth is tightened and still, eyes sharp as a viper, fixed. _I also see beasts where there are none; I hope you may forgive me for that. _The black gaze dies down, closes behind white lids. She thinks about taking the hand hanging at the man's side, but she doesn't dare. He moves to the threshold; his military steps are watered down, without any will. The girl turns out the light, only sees weak, bluish glow, the children are still playing. Everything is immobile. He's still there, somewhere; she can hear his breathing. _I have nothing to forgive you for._

* * *

_Have you been too busy? I haven't received any letters from you. How are you? How are Ginny and your parents? Please, please write to me, I want to see you so much, I miss you, I hope you're okay. Again, write to me, Ron._

_I love you so much, Hermione J. Granger._

* * *

The Potion lessons were over; Snape was sitting in the kitchen, drinking his habitual coffee.

"Two weeks for the trial. I'm nervous, how are you?"

The man raised his eyes and looked at her with some sympathy. Hermione was thankful for that, one of those gestures that were more and more common.

"I'm not nervous if you ask me, Granger."

"Call me Hermione."

"Whatever you wish," he turned his attention back to his coffee and a copy of the Prophet.

"Where will you go when they free you?"

"That's not a fact."

"You will be free; if they don't free you, we will. Harry, the Wea—"

"I know the list."

"Then, what will you do?"

The man seemed uncomfortable, as if cornered against a wall.

"I don't know it yet."

The girl reached for the coffee pot and helped herself.

"I'm planning to return to Hogwarts to finish my seventh year. I'll like to see you there; it'd be good to keep in contact."

"I'm not going back to Hogwarts."

Judging by the man's tone of voice and expression, Hermione knew she had made a mistake.

"You're right, I can imagine why. Then, what will you do?"

"I already told you I don't know."

The girl swallowed; the man's knuckles were white, gripping the newspaper with fury.

"Do you have anywhere to go?"

He raised his head from the newspaper, irritated, apprehensive.

"I had a house, but I'm not going back there, I'm going to sell it."

"That's a good idea," she commented, trying to soften the tension. "You know, while you find a new house you can come with Harry and me, he had told me so in his letter, both of us think it'd be fine."

"With Potter?"

"I know you don't like him, but Harry promises not to bother you with anything."

"Then it's already planned?" he asked ironically, raising his brow in a way that managed to intimidate Jean.

"It's just a suggestion. We could be your family, we—"

"Enough, Miss Granger," he raised the newspaper again to hide his face. The Gryffindor's hand pulled it down so they faced each other again.

"Hermione to my friends. We're friends, right?"

"You've told me so already."

"Because it's true. Call me Hermione."

"Alright, leave me alone," he half-raised the newspaper. "Hermione," he spat, watching her directly. The girl seemed satisfied and helped herself with some more coffee.

* * *

_I don't know what's wrong with you, you're crazy, you're abrupt, you're bold, more than I thought. Maybe you're not so much like Lily. You could open my closed fist, unlink my fingers and take out whatever I had in hand, you would, you always do it and I don't even know how. Sometimes you seem to guess, read me, sense me. I thought it was your blind spot, but I'm not completely right; you're different from how you were at the beginning of this lockdown; you no longer fear me, you look for me as if we were equals. What's wrong with you, Granger? What gives you the ability to treat me as you do?_

_Sometimes I realized you hugged Potter a lot and I wonder if afterwards, you'll dare to do it with me too._

_I can't do anything but lower my gaze and hide behind books, because I can't stand so much of you, of your presence that fills every corner, and those big, thoughtful eyes that you bury in me, because you bury them in me, like needles. You're a bushy, mouthy abomination. And I'm like a bug you take and stare with your needle eyes on a table to vivisect and you want to eviscerate my life and my secrets to satiate your curiosity and your vehemence to 'help me', or at least that's what you call your urges of interrogatories and prosecution._

_I'd like to cast you aside before you plunge more your hands in me, but I don't, you know why? Because, to my misfortune, I don't want to._

_Do whatever you want to do, Granger, I'm not going to stop you anymore, but there's a price to pay: Weasley's and your letters, that burn every day in my hands._

* * *

_My dear professor Snape,_

_I write a letter to you knowing I won't be able to give you, not for a long time. I wouldn't dare to do it sooner than that. But I want to talk to you and I don't dare say anything now, not face to face, not with your eyes on me. But one day you'll have it in your hands; I'll store it in a drawer and it'll be here for you._

_Today we talked a lot, remember? We're in the house arrest, in the one that has paintings of jars with flowers that you don't like. Good, we're friends, or at least I've already declared myself your friends and you sometimes call me Hermione, but my name leaves your mouth harshly, like a growl, mumbling it, you try not to say it. I'm back at the beginning, today we talked a lot; I did most of the talking, but after much insist you told me something, maybe you still remember. I don't think I'll forget it for many years._

_You told me about Tobias Snape and Eileen Prince. It was short, barely a few words, but it was enough. You said Tobias didn't like anything and that Eileen aged too quickly, you said you thought Hogwarts was the definite solution for everything, then you kept quiet and I didn't dare ask anything more. I understood, either way; I understood you weren't happy, that maybe you have never been happy. I think about you a lot, about the fact they bullied you when you were young, about the fact you say you committed a sin you had to pay for. I imagine the horrors Voldemort put you through, you know? I was tortured once; I'd like to share it with you, but I'm afraid of talking about that and uncover something that shouldn't be uncovered. I'd like to talk to you about everything and listen to your words or prudent silences._

_I care about you a lot, professor. I know you're not perfect, I know you don't like people, I know you sometimes can even hurt others. But today I don't want to talk about that, you've offended me but I forgive you; I judged you and condemned you like the others and I didn't have any right to do so._

_I wanted to tell you I'm sorry, that I'm sorry for everything that has happened to you, not because I know about it but because I just sense it, I sense it in your outstripped eyes, in your bitter face. In the resentful sadness you show when peeking through the window and wait for something that never arrives, that you know will never arrive._

_I can't say this to your face because you'll get mad, you'll think I'm lying, that I pity you, and that's not true._

_Professor Snape, try to move on, but not forget, because that's not possible._

_I'll be with you._

_Your pupil that esteems you and cares for you._

_H. J. Granger._

* * *

**Translator's note:** There's a paragraph here that I separated and edited because it was quite hard to understand in Spanish, much less in English. Just FYI.


	21. The Voices in the Air

**Disclaimer**: All rights belong to Rowling and Gato Azul.

* * *

**21\. The Voices in the Air**

"… Bellatrix."

The man raised his brows, apparently impressed.

"Bad luck, Miss Granger, that it was precisely her."

The girl nodded in silence; her face paled. The living room's clock, like a time's vein, throbbed its tempo, lending a voice to the seconds passing by. In the dim light, the girl folded his sweater's sleeve; cold, rough hands took her arm and stared, with a doctor's scrutiny, like a violin maker looking for marks in the skin of softwood.

_Mudblood_.

The man's mouth was tightened; she didn't meet his eyes, his hands holding her arm.

"Luckily Dobby came to help us; who knows what'd have happened if it wasn't for him, but he died that same day."

Her face seemed to turn grey, her lips were white, the big eyes having a wet, dull glow.

"It can be erased. I haven't done it because I'm not very skilled with my left hand and a lot of precision is needed, just like with your forehead's scar."

"Give me your wand," the voice flowed heavily, too grave.

She extended her wand to the wizard's hands; the tip was on her arm, in the M, where the name many people had called her started. The name that turned her into an unworthy person, no matter what she did. She always told herself she didn't believe in those things, but when she saw the word tattooed on his arm she felt that, deep down, she had always believed it just a bit, that she didn't deserve to be there, in Hogwarts, that somehow it was all too beautiful.

"I wonder why I always interrupted your classes."

Snape raised his head; he could sense in the broken voice that tears were close.

"Because if I wasn't the best at everything I didn't have any right to be with wizards, I… I had to prove I wasn't trash."

The man said nothing, gazing back at the scar.

"I don't think you have to prove anything to anyone; deep down, the ones that insulted you were cowards. I know the Malfoys ran away, you think they were better than you?" Snape spoke harshly, almost as if he was scolding her for some ruined potion.

"No."

"Then stop crying. Tell me the spell and I'll erase your mark."

The girl mumbled the spell; soon the man was whispering it, the wand was pulling skin until it was left in its place. It was painful, but very effective.

Snape's eyes wandered to the wall, deep, charged with something she couldn't name. They arrived at Granger's face.

The mark was gone, the girl's arm was still held by one of the man's hands.

"How long did she torture you?"

"I don't know. It felt like a long time, maybe some hours."

He slowly let her go. Hermione looked at her arm, now clean, as it had always been. She raised her eyes, thankful; the man was deep in thought, with his face deadly serious. Sometimes his face appeared to be made of stone, or a very strong, very cold wax.

"Professor Snape."

The disintegrating gaze hovered over hers.

"Thank you very much."

His expression didn't change at all, until the girl, following some impulse, took his hand and kissed him shyly on his sunken cheek. Rough skin, a sudden drowning. Suddenly she was afraid of what she had done and, mumbling a shaky "goodnight", went to her room, without looking back at the man who had been her teacher once.

* * *

The man touched, like a raw wound, the place where the kiss was born.

He was horrified by the flare of euphoria that swirled in his chest. Everything smelt like vanilla, he smelt like vanilla, a mawkish, tasteless smell.

He went to peek through the window. The fleeting brush of Granger's lips gave him goosebumps. He had to quash down the pleasant feeling the act had caused in him. He was Severus Snape, a man like him couldn't be vulnerable to such things. But the occasions where someone had dared to touch him were so rare, he might as well list the times they'd happened; for example, once, when he was young, McGonagall had put her hand on his shoulder lovingly, an uncommon gesture for such a severe woman like her. He had never forgotten it.

Despite the man he was, despite the bad opinion he had on almost everyone that surrounded him, he couldn't forget those details.

* * *

She sat on the edge of her bed and reconstructed the scene piece by piece. She wanted to see it from outside, like a photograph. The clock kept throbbing, the man's face always seemed solemn by his colours: the visible, gloomy difference between the languid white and heavy black. He always looked as if he was going to a funeral, always looking almost transparent. Sometimes she could see his veins, green and purple in his arms, as if they were barely covered by a thin layer of skin. She had never imagined she'd kiss the cheek of that particular man; she could've kissed Remus, who seemed to need such care, or Sirius, who might have smiled at her and winked. Sirius, the decadent beauty. But Snape, it was almost absurd.

She hadn't even looked his face after the transgression, of the infamy of a kiss on the rough cheek. She'd been too embarrassed to dare to do so. She had to start to hold herself back and to finally understand that not everyone wanted her hugs or fraternal caresses; Kreacher had already proved her so, disgusted by her compassion, but her urge to relieve or express herself was bigger than her in many occasions. She just hoped Snape didn't take it as badly as the elf.

* * *

They lived inside some kind of circle and schedules that casually always overlapped. One would sit on the couch and it was a matter of minutes for the other to arrive, be it to lay on the carpet if it was Granger, or to stand next to the bookcase if it was Snape. The one waiting knew the other would appear on the threshold soon. Then they pretended they were going to get a book, that they weren't looking for each other, hunting in some way.

Granger was worried for the former professor's reaction of the imprudent kiss she had left on his cheek, but the next day, when she found him waiting for her in the kitchen with a clear, bright gaze, she knew that expression was the closest thing to sympathy Snape's face could show.

It was time she lost her fear for the professor. What could he do to her, after all? Dwarf her with one of his crushing, disapproving looks, insult her, yell at her… He had already done all of that. Who cared if he did it again?

The man seemed satisfied with her company, he didn't growl at her, he wasn't rude, at least not intending to be so. He greeted her, made her some casual questions, even in some strange occasions she had seen him show his weird smile, both ironic and mocking, as if he was remembering something.

And all of it for a simple, fleeting kiss. She was starting to seriously wonder who'd truly started the cold war between Snape and Harry. Who had done it? Who had unknowingly lightened up the fuse? Maybe neither of them, maybe something in between them for a long time.

"James Potter," Hermione said in the middle of her room.

* * *

Granger smiled openly, without malice, face to face. The man's face didn't change, but his eyes softened; they suddenly seemed to get filled with something, boiling energy hidden in the blackness.

She arched over the table, hiding her mouth with a hand, trying to avoid a laugh, but she couldn't do it and her laughter freed in the middle of the kitchen; she was surprised by her voice, so loud and lively. The man looked at her surprised; his mouth stretched lightly, his eyes seemed small like gaps, and was vibrating. Hermione stopped slowly, until she was left with her first smile stuck on her face, and looked at the man with deep attention. And she thought that she had never seen him smile at anyone before.

She extended her hand to the man's, still halfway on the table.

"Laugh, Professor Snape."

The black eyes wandered stunned around her countenance, still softened.

"Your laughter is enough for both of us."

Hermione knew that wasn't an insult by the light tone he used. Then she squeezed the hand fisted inside hers.

* * *

_I like to see you walk around the house, you remind me of many things. You remind me of Hogwarts that seemed to be built around the floor where you stood, as if you were carrying it on your feet's sole. You smell like Hogwarts, like the dungeons, you exhale cold, exhale that stalled, green light that is there._

_When I see you climbing the stairs I think about the Astronomy tower, about the grey sky and loud with lightning, about the floating candles in the Great Hall. You go around the world like a soldier, walking as if inside you some trumps announced war._

_And I like to smile at you because it seemed like somewhere, somebody lightened a firefly for you. A bight, blue button._

_You're so pale, you and your elegance that somehow doesn't fit with your face of an enemy. You're the unknown, you're a question I don't know how to start to answer. You're the prince's mystery, the serpent's secret._

_Now that I know you… no, that I'm starting to know you, I feel amazed and sad and I wonder. _

_When are you going to tell me? Will you ever do so? What was it? What dark spot stained your life? What grave mistake did you make?_

* * *

_Are you happy here? _

_You smile many times a day, you go out to buy things to eat and come back, with your vanilla smell that doesn't leave the house entirely. Even those bloody paintings are starting to be enough for me, the round table, the window, the stars. They are enough. I don't have to go anywhere, I don't care if I'm in a house arrest; this is not a prison for me. I don't want to get out._

_Do you want to leave? You've never said so. Why does the world have to start over again?_

_For me, it's enough what I have here, you're enough. This transitory wait is the last of my possessions. There's nothing beyond it._

* * *

_Hermione,_

_Write to me, dammit! What's wrong with you? Enough, write! What do you want me to do? To go there? I have to be with George and I told you so! You can't be mad for that, you're with Snape. Or did you forgot you preferred to be with that greasy git instead of me? I didn't tell you, that's true, but I'm saying it now: I want you to be with me, I want to see you every day, you don't understand the light sphere, haven't you got it? You went through me that day. You are that light sphere. I can't stop hearing your voice, of wishing to truly hear it._

_Hermione, please, just write._

_Ron W._

* * *

_One more day without a letter from you and I don't understand why._

_I don't know what other way I can ask you to write, even just a few lines. I want to think something is not letting you do it, but I can't find what._

_Ronald, I love you, don't you love me anymore?_

_Yours, Hermione J. Granger._

* * *

_The girl turned on a _muggle_ recorder that she'd found in an old closet. The man waits, sitting on the couch, pretending to read. He looks at her, scrutinising the changing shade of her curly hair. The music expands, quieting down the clock; a hard women voice, dense, slow, moves around, shift sensually, takes the room, absorb the silence. The bushy girl moves around clumsily; suddenly the man finds her too young, her imprecise feet and bird nestle on her head amuses him. She turns to look at him, complicit; a choir intervene and raises, imposes itself. Hermione is prettier tangled in a song, he likes it; music seems to flow from her. If he wasn't who he was, maybe he wouldn't be sitting on the sofa anymore, just looking at her. She smiled and follows the rhythm, watching him; she feels as if she's in the threshold of two worlds just by looking at him, surrounded by saxophone noises and black women's voices. She can't avoid smiling. She pictures him everywhere and thinks that every time she sees him outside Hogwarts, she'll have the same feeling that she's in an alternative universe._

* * *

They sat on the afternoons to listen to the _muggle_ music Hermione had found; it sounded like stained eyes, of alleys with pink bricks, of tapestries, of a distant city's movement. It sounded like a woman in front of a mirror, of days and memories they didn't have.

Granger put a cassette and sat to listen on the couch's arm, where Snape was sitting too. He watched her back and twisted hair, thinking that soon the trial's day would arrive and the silent house and records and Granger wouldn't be there anymore.

Music danced over their eyes like a ribbon, and a changing teasing. Even he liked it; he, who hadn't liked almost anything in his life.

He closed his eyes; everything was black behind his lids.

Black and soft. A reddish gleam and colourful lines moved in his hidden vision; music kept on going, dancing on their own, filling the bookcase's corners and the books' gaps. Granger was just a few centimetres away; he didn't see her, but her vague smell helped him detect her presence.

Every day he smelled more like vanilla, an almost physical smell, a perfume that suddenly wasn't just that. There was warmth, a soft weight and threads that stuck in his nose when he breathed.

He opened his eyes very slowly, as if he could disturb a pond's water if he moved, if he breathed. The saxophone kept blaring like light buttons, throwing sparks. The weight on his shoulder was a weave of random brown hair, a juvenile head with a small smile in-between.

He was forked between the loving girl and normality and coherence and all those things that have to do with order and common sense. And when had he cared about that? In reality, while he liked to presume his good use of logic, he had never quite been a very rational person. Then he barely exhaled, debating on his inside to whether to support his head too or pulling away or pretend he was asleep and didn't know anything. None of the options sounded like him; yelling and send her to her room might be the most prudent and right.

"Who might have lived here before us?"

Her big eyes held him with her gaze. He only shook his head, why was she so calm?

"I'm sorry, I'm used to supporting myself on Ron and Harry, I didn't think you would mind," she started to retreat.

"Leave it, you can stay where you are. Do you think a child will intimidate me?"

Hermione shrugged and went back with rigid discomfort to her former position.

"I thought you just didn't like to be touched."

The man said nothing. Granger felt, as the songs and the rain outside continued, that her shoulder first rigid started to relax. Snape had to care for her a bit, if not, he wouldn't allow such closeness. She smiled, thinking about all that had to happen so that this simple moment could occur. She had to wash dirty bandages, heal wounds, withstand neurotic convalescents and Death Eater's attacks, sleep under a bed and get soaked in the yard. Snape wasn't an easy friend, and yet Harry hadn't been either. She laughed slightly; the man looked at her from the corner of his eye.

"I was thinking about the day you left me in the yard with a sheet. Why did you do that?"

The girl didn't seem moved by resentful curiosity.

"I liked to bother you; I wanted you to get angry and lose your temper."

"Why?" Jean asked, turning to look at him; the huge nose inhaled a thread of hair and then the man pushed it away with a hand; the girl seemed close to laughter.

"Your apparent maturity annoyed me; I wanted you to throw a temper tantrum so I could laugh at your face and mock your pride."

"That's a bit sick, don't you think?"

"I don't like people who think they're the good guys of the story, the canon of perfection."

Hermione shrugged, she actually didn't like them either.

"I talked in class not because I felt I was perfect, the opposite, and I felt this frenzy to make everyone see that I wasn't useless."

"I know that."

The girl inhaled strongly; her crown brushed Snape's pointy chin.

The cassette went around in the recorder; the rough whisper called one woman over and over. Hermione thought about Ron and, letting herself go, she asked the worst question she could've made to the grieving man.

"Have you ever fallen in love?"

The hospitable man went rigid again. Hermione didn't have to do anything but feel to know she'd made a mistake.

"You don't have to answer."

"Once," he said with a rough voice, strangled and even a bit aggressive.

Granger breathed again, setting free the air with some relief. At least she had come unscathed from her slip.

"Where is she?"

"She's gone."

The bushy hair penetrated with more insistence the concavity between the man's shoulder and chin. She didn't have any word to give him and so she started touching him, to penetrate the moment after that answer, to make it pass quickly. The voice in the cassette expanded like a clot.

_I came here kneeling_

_Next to your hand_

She wished that telling him how sorry she was were useful, but no. She put her hand under his arm and squeezed; Snape was completely still, silent and hard. That was the thing that left, that was the distant thing he waited for every time he peeked through the window. In her eyes, a warm liquid formed, which she tried to stop.

_Ashes of kisses I give you_

_Hear my prayers of love_

She didn't want to look at him; it was as if she had slapped him again. She wanted to speak but nothing left her mouth, usually eager to let out excited words everywhere. She just rubbed the black-clothed arm, to rub it with her hand as if she was cleaning a plate or wanted to give some heat back to the body. It was a clumsy gesture, hurried, an odd scratch more than a caress, but she still did it several times. Snape moved an arm as if telling her it wasn't necessary, to stop.

"I'm sorry," she said, just to sink strongly her head in the free space that was in the half-blood's neck.

_Midnight's Virgin_

_Virgin, that's what you are_

"Turn that off. It's cold and it's already night. Stop crying about everything."

Granger pulled away while the man stood up and pushed the recorder's buttons with violent frustration because he couldn't find the right one and he wanted to be left alone in that exact moment. The girl tightened her coat, her nose runny.

"I'm very sentimental, it was not my intention," she stood up from the couch's arm, pulling a stubborn hair back to her ear, but it went back to her forehead a second later. "It's the blue button."

The man muttered curses.

_I'll pull down the stairs to light up your feet._

Then silence, the reverential tic tac and a shivered gaze between the girl and the half-blood.

"Go to sleep, Hermione," a final sentence, dull, kind but almost impatient. She wanted to hug him, even walked a few steps, but he was looking at her and his harsh, steely gaze deflated her courage. She pulled away, covering her initial intentions.

"Have a good night."

She left the pale widower behind, the deprived half-blood. She wanted to sleep and think about nothing.


	22. The Luminescent Mystery

**Disclaimer**: Nothing here belongs to me.

* * *

**22\. The Luminescent Mystery**

The tall, grieving frame fell on the couch like a tower slowly crumbling. Lily burnt in his gut like a handful of altar candles; Lily, the unforgettable one, the eternal memory that overcame him anywhere, the painful, throbbing expectation when he looked at a redhead woman or watched Potter's quiet eyes.

Granger's hand reopened the wound; she separated the non-scarred flesh almost tenderly, leaving the blood exposed with her thin hands, with her vanilla smell.

The girl's wet eyes were like a caress that didn't touch him, and yet it was his, it belonged to him. Maybe it was the music or the rain that always softened people, that seemed allies of secret hugs and meetings underwater. He breathed in, and the air trembled in his lips when it got out. And he thought about the girl, he painted her in his mind, laying down on her bed, with her eyes wide open, full of an emotion she conveyed and which he couldn't name. There she blinked in the dark, shivering by something similar to fear.

And that way in which she rubbed his arm, as if she thought he was freezing and had to be warmed up. She looked like a child that had broken an expensive ornament and tried to fix it with glue, uselessly, without giving up.

Snape threw back his head and closed his eyes; he knew himself well enough to admit it wouldn't be easy for him to let the girl go, that just like a parasite he was getting used to being close to her more than it was prudent. He knew that, in that night, Lily wasn't the only pain that surrounded him, that they both were now one.

Lily accompanied him every day of his life, in the littlest things, when he said some bad words which she didn't like, when he looked at the children swinging at the park. Lily was like chronic pain, like a war scar. Lily was empty space, the lacking that a severed limb left, his soul in his case.

One didn't walk the same way when one lost a leg, when one knows they won't be whole again.

But Granger, what was her role in this enclosed problem? None, none at all, and yet she was there and that was, for him, a bad signal. Because he thought of Evans and sometimes compared them without wanting to. There was something similar in them, as if deep down they were made of the same stuff, of stardust and empowering breath. As if they were two branches of the same tree.

Granger carried in her hands a tiny piece of his past life, of the future he never managed to have. But he couldn't take that from her, he didn't have any right, there was no way.

* * *

_Enough. Did you want to see how much my patience lasted? Do you want me to beg? Well, here I am. Please, mercy, for anything, just write! What is stopping you? You're writing to Harry but not me. Why, Hermione? Tell me, what do you need to hear from me? It's because of what happened in the Ministry? Because I didn't guess you were in danger? If I had known, I'd have been there._

_Do I have to guess the lack of your letters means you don't want anything to do with me anymore? What? Am I too poor, too simple for you?_

_I admit it, I love you, Hermione, are you there? Are you reading this? I love you. Iloveyouiloveyouiloveyou!_

_I got accepted in the Quidditch team, if you're interested in knowing, and I'm going to leave town to start training, so we won't be able to see each other in a long time. Lavender has been hovering around me and says she wants to come with me. I told her no many times, because of you. Am I not worth anything to you, Hermione? Am I nobody? At least have the guts to tell me. I love you. If you have any respect for what I feel for you, tell me if you don't care about me anymore._

_Ron W._

Snape watched the extended parchment and, for a brief second, he thought about giving it to the hands it was meant for, but no. The hate was too big to just swallow it; he hated Ronald Weasley and his letters, he hated the postdates Hermione wrote him, he hated every second when he could read in her gaze the redhead's image. He didn't care about being evil; he wasn't going to let that happen if he could avoid it. Lily had been taken away from him, why couldn't he do the same and collect the cost of his bitterness?

He locked himself in his room and practised Hermione's handwriting for hours until he managed a convincing resemblance; then he decided to give the final punch. Bent over his desk, he redacted the last chapter of a love story. He tried to recreate Granger's exact words in a situation like that; he penetrated the final room of intimacy and stole from Hermione her right to be silent.

He impersonated her and gave the final cut to the love weaves, made verbs and parchments burn, the nights of insomnia and yearning, everything, he made it burn from the roots, destroying Weasley from the inside out.

And he didn't regret it, nor was he afraid of what could happen.

* * *

Hermione smiled when they met in the hallways. She smiled at meals when she picked up his empty plate, when they met in the living room to listen to music.

He didn't want the bloody trial to happen; in any case, he was expecting to be executed instead of being thrown out to the world again, a world he didn't feel any affection for. At least if he died, maybe he would have the courage to say the truth once and for all, to tell everyone what he really wanted to tell them. To yell it at them as the Dementors ate him and kissed his soul out of him.

* * *

Hermione looked over her shoulder; Snape had his head resting against one hand in languid meditation. His gaze was misty, distant, fixed like a corpse's. She didn't like seeing him like that, she felt it was her fault for asking him if he had ever loved anyone.

She touched his shoulder and rubbed it. Snape seemed startled, he looked at her intently, very focused; first, it was her eyes, then the curves of her forehead and the beginning of her nose. Hermione almost trembled; he was intimidating sometimes, she didn't have any idea of what he could be thinking about, and yet she knew it was something important, considering the way the Potion Master's eyes shone. It was almost like Snape could start a fire when he stabbed her with his gaze.

The half-blood looked back to the floor; he seemed as if he wanted to say something, but just blinked repetitively, without saying anything. Since it was him Hermione hesitated, she didn't have the guts to ask him if everything was alright. She knew it wasn't, but couldn't completely explain herself why, and she was also afraid of any answer that Snape could give her.

It has been days since she had started to feel fascination and a sudden fear when she thought about him.

* * *

Granger slowly sensed the origin of her own mystery as she looked at her storybook.

The rose' and the Beast's drawing, the rose surrounded by stillness and a veil of earthly lights. The luminescent mystery. The beast, like a sullen warden, with the flower taking hold of his body, condemned by it, by such a beautiful object.

The same feeling came back to the girl: defeat, the overwhelming wonder at the picture of such gigantic body of a titan, at the essence of a captive bird that lived in that body. And she understood.

Snape was the Beast, the missing woman was that flower, or maybe a dead Beauty. She remembered the pseudonym Snape had used when he was a student: the half-blood prince.

She smiled bitterly.

* * *

The problem was that the idea of leaving the house arrest was so dreadful to him, he avoided thinking that there were only five days left before that awful moment.

Granger was fine with him, right? She smiled, wandering around the house; in general, one could say she seemed content and satisfied, one could say she enjoyed their moments together on the couch listening cassettes. He didn't want to go anywhere, he wanted to stay there, he wanted her to stay too. Granger was fine with him, why did everyone else have to intervene in that equilibrium he had finally achieved?

What stupidity, the stability of his life right now was the same as a house of cards'. Granger was with him not because she wanted to; she had been forced to do it, they had locked her with him, like a prisoner.

He put his head in his open palms.

A black fire extended inside his chest; suddenly it felt like someone had punched him in the stomach. Everything was wrong, he shouldn't exist, just because he wasn't necessary for anything anymore, or anyone.

In moments like that he wanted to go to hell and take everyone with him. He congratulated himself for having written that letter to Weasley with Hermione's name. If they were going to separate him from her, maybe kill him, at least he wouldn't go without leaving a print of his resentment.

It was their fault, all of them, and their perfect lives. Yes, he could die, be destroyed and his soul severed to pieces, but not before he spit in their faces, staining them with a shred of his own unhappiness.

He was a snake, and he wouldn't disappear without biting first.

* * *

Hermione slowly opened the room's door, the hallways' light entered the room in silence. The curtains were closed, a lamp on the bureau emitted a reddish light. In that room there were no flower paintings; he had probably removed them. Hermione made a noise with her mouth; nothing moved inside the room.

She slipped her feet to the darkness and aphonia. She knew that Snape had received some news from the Ministry and she wanted to read the letters, to be sure everything was alright and that the man wasn't omitting any important detail; she knew him well and feared he was hiding something from her.

She didn't trust Snape's willingness to save himself, she hadn't even seen him writing a defence (like she had already done) or write down dates and names to give his statement. It seemed like he simply didn't care.

She got close to the bed's edge; at her right, there was a desk with many locked drawers, but that wasn't a hidrance. She had a wand and no common lock would be an obstacle to her.

She ruffled through papers in the first drawer; McGonagall's letter was there, but despite the curiosity that filled her, she got away from the desk and closed the drawer to avoid being tempted any longer.

The second drawer waited for her. She looked over her shoulder, holding her breath, with a sudden shiver of fear. The man was laying on the bed, unmoving. She exhaled, trying to calm down her pulse; if he opened his eyes, they'd surely end up arguing and he would kick her out of his room, literally.

And just like that, without noises or lights, she discovered him. In a bent of her head, her eyes found the line's fluctuations, the tones, the depths and surfaces of the quiet half-blood. His pale, unmoving hands were spread, one over his chest, the other on the borders of his abdomen. She turned reverently, as if she was entering a church; that scene was very similar to a funeral, the way the man was laying down, his sober black clothes, the dim light, like a visitation. But he was alive, his breath was a blurry whisper. She thought she should open the second drawers and hurry up to leave that place. Then she thought she may stay, that they were friends after all, and that he wouldn't be too much annoyed at her company.

She could say, without fear of being wrong, that Snape was an ugly man. His face simply didn't have the harmony that the laws of beauty dictated. His nose was too big; in that precise moment Hermione saw the nostril's shape clearly, the black hair pulled backwards, the brief forehead, white, pure. The austere body stilled, thin, the high-collared cloak, a bit tight, that gave him the air of a catholic priest. To watch him like that, with his face devoid of any emotion, filled her with an unprecedented strangeness. She had seen him sleep before, but something had changed, suddenly she was surprised he'd been her professor for so long, that Snape was that same man laying on the bed. His transparent face, his long frame covered by a cloak of stillness, of absence. On his neck there was the infamous scar that had almost taken his life. When Nagini had bitten him, Hermione could only think of a way to destroy the Horcrux to win the war, but she had never experienced the horror of what had happened to him. Until that day.

Her fingers defiled the static atmosphere and touched the mark on the neck, the ripped flesh's corners, which would never leave anymore. She thought, he may as well be dead and his funeral would've been like that, just like that, like that instant. And she was glad, she blessed the fact that it hadn't happened, that after his sleep he'd open his lids again and they would listen to jazz downstairs and she would look at that way he had of eating, so markedly elegant it was almost funny.

What sweet, calm silence exhaled the sleeping body; Hermione thought of the alive machinery of his fluids and organs contracting, functioning slowly, about the blood's warm path, about the warmth she'd feel in her skin and soul if she dared to hug him, to take his pale, docile hand. To listen to the tense drum of his heart.

She kept quiet, overwhelmed by the wetness in her chest, by the sharp, telling throb, and she told herself everything was alright, that nothing was happening there, that she simply liked to watch him sleep, just like she liked to meet him as he sat on the couch, or stood in front of the windows or growled to the painting of the red flowers. She pondered for the first time about the fact that, once the house arrest was done, all of that would be gone and it wouldn't happen again, because Snape probably wouldn't want to visit her if he wasn't forced to. She looked at him for a few more moments, like a fleeting whirlwind, that comes and goes without any warning.

She went back to the papers, feeling suddenly depressed. She was going to miss him, she was going to dream for weeks about her finding him in some street or at Hogwarts, she already knew that. If only she dared to ask for him not to remove her from his life, for them to be friends beyond these four walls, for them to keep meeting so she could take him to listen to music. If only she wasn't so scared when she was close to him, if she wasn't so afraid of his disapproval and his reject…

* * *

He was standing next to the kitchen sink with a cup of coffee in hand. It was just a matter of opening her mouth, of letting the words that were already there out, which she already had planned over and over, so simple and yet it took her minutes to be able to say it. She swallowed and chided herself; if she didn't do it then she'd regret having been such a coward.

"I want to keep seeing you."

Snape opened his eyes; he looked at the door with expectant remoteness.

"I like you, Professor Snape, and I don't want to stop seeing you."

The half-blood watched the floor demurely; his face was strange, paler, his eyes seemed to contain a strong stream, a gale.

"You don't want to see me?"

He stretched the silence and hit her with that boiling, stormy gaze of his.

"What do you mean? Where do you want to see me?"

"Wherever, wherever you want to stay, in a park, in the Diagon Alley, in Hogwarts. I just want you to let me visit you."

"And for what? You'll visit me and then what will we do?"

Hermione shrugged. She knew it wasn't going to be easy, but she didn't understand why he was asking so many questions; for her, the only thing that mattered was whether he wanted her company or not.

"I don't know, anything, walk together, talk, listen to music," she added, tilting her head, trying to create complicity by alluding to those moments next to the recorder that she knew Snape also enjoyed.

"I don't see why not," he finally said, watching her with suspicion.

The girl gave him her fraternal smile, the distant brush of her brown eyes.

"Do you know what the cinema is, professor Snape? I'll show it to you."


	23. The Belligerent Medusa

**Disclaimer**: Again, nothing here belongs to me.

* * *

**23\. The Belligerent Medusa**

_What do you pretend? Are you going to make me walk through every muggle neighbourhood with you? Are you going to drag me to the theatre and the cinema and the fireworks exhibitions? And then what, Granger? Then you will get bored or you will think I don't need you anymore and you will leave with any other guy to continue your verbiage and your parade of condescending smiles. Is that what you want, Granger? Do you want to see me integrating to your world, to your way of seeing things and being happy, or trying to? You want me to stop wearing dark clothes and stop frowning or crossing my arms._

_And what would I get in return, even if I change for you? What will you give me?_

_Will I manage to keep your company even when I'm old? If I give you my artificial, forced smiles?_

_The thing is, Granger, I don't want you to leave._

* * *

_There is something between us, something like a flare; there's something, just that. A small burst that didn't exist before._

_You scare me, professor Snape; that new stare has something I don't want to recognize. If I wasn't talking about you, I'd dare to say it's the same ravenous expression men show as they look at girls on the street, the way in which their eyes search them greedily. I'm barely realizing now that you're a man of flesh and blood, and you can't be exempt of everyone else's weaknesses. But you wouldn't look at me like that, would you? I'm not even pretty, and you seem to be celibate; your mere clothes speak of firmness, of self-control, decency. Then what is it, Professor Snape? Why do I see rage and silence in you? As if you wanted to ask me something and would hate me for not doing it, as if you despised me because there's something in me that hurts you. What's wrong, Professor Snape? We agreed we'd keep seeing each other; well, at least I promised I'd keep looking for you, we will go to the city and the cinema and we will be friends. Then, what is bothering you? What is it that you can't ask me?_

_Dear Professor Snape, sometimes I don't know what to do with you._

* * *

Three days, professor Snape. The girl sits, the chair's arm sinks slightly at her weight. Her veil smelling of vanilla spread over both. The man is tense, he always is when she is concerned. The clock throbs on a wall; the girl's eyes wander over the green tapestry, rounded shapes that multiply to the end of the wall. Granger lets her head tilt, perceiving the air around her; it smells like grass, why does Snape always smell like that? Finally, she feels a warm shoulder under her head. You will be free, professor. There are no noises, the girl shrinks; she wants to look for another body's warmth, she wants to hunt down a hug. We may be a... what did you say? A bunch of morons, but we will defend you anyway. The man doesn't smile; he looks at her, something in the bottom of that blackness makes her tremble. Do you believe me? The gaze stays, fixed, suddenly too intimate, too intrusive and silent. Snape's eyes aren't actually even ugly, they see through you, so heavy, so still. The girl feels her cheeks redden. Yes, Granger, I believe you, but that's not the problem. She seems disappointed. Sometimes I'm afraid of many things, I'm afraid for you. She stares back the pale outline, the protruding nose. A bold hand travels through space, arrives at the warmth centre, to the dark and rough and tepid clothes. Once there it comes and goes, caress a rigid arm, two eyes watch her, the hand follows its trajectory. Granger is no longer afraid of the half-blood. The thing is that you don't have to fight alone this time. Yellowish lids cover the deep stare. Deep down, he was never completely alone, he had a reason, but Granger doesn't know that. He had a name which he clung to like a sword, like a flag. Lily, the homeland and the reason. The braided girl watches him like a picture; Snape understands why Potter was so strong, she radiates it, she probably held him many times. Granger, the burning flower, the new country in which he starts to root.

* * *

Hermione opened the room's door; nothing could be heard from Snape's dark cave. The lamp barely shined; the man slept. Downstairs someone knocked on the door, something highly unusual and improbable in that house. Hermione went downstairs, wondering if it wasn't some Ministry's member. A green gaze too ingrained in her memory was outside the door. But Harry didn't seem happy to see her; when she threw herself to his arms, the man barely reciprocated.

"What's wrong, Harry?" she asked, scrutinizing him, trying to find the reason for his serious expression.

"The day after tomorrow is the hearing, and I came here to see if you're prepared."

Heavy steps went down the stairs; Snape's tall, dark frame was soon with them. Harry tilted his head as a greeting; the Occlumens raised a brow and grimaced.

"What are you doing here, Potter?"

The boy put his white hand inside his jacket and withdrew two envelopes. Snape felt a sudden, hot flush.

"Professor McGonagall sent you a letter, and Hermione, Ron sent you one too."

The green in Potter's eyes was one from a marshy swamp, a sour, resentful shade.

The Potion Master watched with a horror he could barely hide as Potter put the letter in Granger's hands; his brain squeezed itself, painfully trying to find a way, an excuse to avoid what he knew would happen, but there wasn't anything he could do, even if he managed to delay the disaster he wouldn't be able to contain it forever.

The girl squeezed the letter next to her heart.

"I want to talk to you alone, Hermione," Potter whispered, but the Potion Master's long body got in between, menacing.

"Please don't extend your already untimely visit, Potter, and let me rest in peace. The house arrest will soon end and you will be able to talk to Granger alone as much as you want."

The boy watched them alternately, hesitating. Hermione's big, uncertain eyes, Snape's stony frown. He retreated while the man gained ground, corralling him against the door.

"Goodbye, Potter."

"Excuse me," he mumbled while his hand found the doorknob. He looked for the girl one last time. "Reply to Ron, Hermione."

She nodded.

* * *

He watched her unfold eagerly the parchment; his heart throbbed in his ears, his voice had gotten stuck in some unknown part of his throat. Granger read the paper, already opened. Her eyes jumped from one line to the other, darkening slowly, turning stormy, like scorched smoke. The corners of her mouth were lowered, as if something pulled them downwards.

_Hermione:_

_I received your letter. I'm not going to beg; you were very clear. Do I seem little to you? Do you want something different for your future than to be my wife and raise children? Why do you assume it would be that? Why do you assume you couldn't be more if you stayed with me? But you know what? Do whatever you want. I know you have no intentions of replying, just as you haven't replied to any of my previous letters, but even if you try, it doesn't matter, I leave the country today for my Quidditch's training, and you won't find me. You don't want to see me, Hermione? Great! I'm leaving, I'm not going to make you uncomfortable by meeting in that stupid trial. The last thing I'll tell you, Hermione, I was sincere, I wouldn't have limited you. I didn't expect you to be a mere housewife! I'm not that kind of git, but deep down you never stopped thinking of me like that, and you're wrong._

_You already decided. Go make your life perfect where I can't see you._

_Goodbye, Ron W._

* * *

Snape couldn't say anything; he stood there like a moron next to her, perfectly knowing that in a few minutes he'd be trapped in a bombing of reproaches and cries and punches.

Granger had finished the letter, smiling nervously.

"I don't get it," she found him in front of her and asked him, with disturbed unease: "He says he's leaving, that he doesn't want to see me, why is he saying I haven't been writing to him?" Her expression was sealed by her tears' wetness, soon her eyes were undone in a wet, lukewarm pain.

"I write to him every day, he's the one that hasn't answered me, why?" her voice sounded sharp, like a bird's screech. "I never told him he was too little for me, why did he…?"

Snape shook to his core when those brown eyes roamed and focused on him, when they stood fixed on him, like boiling pincers.

"Ron never got my letters."

Snape's face was pale, it seemed like he didn't have any blood under his skin. Granger's gaze interned in his.

"Someone wrote to Ron under my name."

"Why do you say that?"

"You have been receiving the mail, all this time."

Snape desperately put his best, deceiving face.

"What do you dare to insinuate, Granger?"

The girl's face transformed into a transparent, wrathful mask.

"Where are the other letters?"

"Why would I know that?"

"You didn't want Harry to speak to me, right? Who else, if the only ones here are you and me? No one from the outside did it."

The man raised his chin; his eyes shone dangerously in a last attempt to defend himself.

"What did you do with the rest?"

The girl's rash figure got close to him, squeezing the parchment in her hand.

She looked at him with her bushy hair like a tornado, like a belligerent medusa, without still being able to believe it, without wanting to believe it.

With her crumpled letter, she took three steps towards him, contained yells boiling in her throat. Treason filled her eyes, burning them. Ronald slipped from her arms; salty, hot water washed her face, water that came from inside her. She let her fierce tears fall, just like that, in front of the Potioneer. She poured out in front of him, feeling as if that moment was sinking in her, that vision of the grieving man, teacher, martyr and traitor.

Slowly, like a vengeful ghost, she extended the paper so he could see it.

"What did you do with the other letters?"

"Nothing."

"What did you do with the other letters?" she repeated as if she hadn't asked a first time, and Snape knew there was no point in resisting, no one else would do such a thing, no one else was in the position of doing so.

"I burned them."

Granger trembled slightly, as if deep down she had been expecting him to deny everything; her strength vanished for a few seconds. She looked at several points of the room, watching the paintings as if asking for help, and then looked at him, almost as if she didn't recognize the man in front of her.

"You burned them," she said in a trembling whisper. "Why?"

Waking up from her grogginess, questions started to fill her.

"You falsified a letter to Ron. What did you tell him? What did you do?"

The irate fire devoured her quickly; she was already on Snape, punching him in the chest like a crazy woman. She pushed him backwards, crumbling the yellow paper in her aggressive hands.

"What is this, why! You bastard!"

Snape never wanted a fight of bare nails, hair and teeth between them, but there they were, twisted in a knot, a bunch of tears and screams and scratches. She attacked him, he tried to protect his face.

"Tell me why, damnit! What did I do to deserve this!"

She punched him in the ribs, without managing to hurt him.

"Speak!"

She got rid of the hand that halted her with a hostile gesture. The eyes, once clear and honest, were now stormy with anger and tears, reddened, changed.

"Speak."

The man opened his mouth but closed it again.

The half-blood's face was a weak ashen shade; he looked at the floor stubbornly, grimacing. When he raised his gaze, the girl slapped him right in the cheek and rushed upstairs.

* * *

_Around you, whoever you really are, I had built an altar of mirrors. It's dumb, but I didn't expect you to hurt me this way; you killed Dumbledore, maybe for a good reason, but that doesn't undo the damage your hands can do, the acid you spray around your life and which finally reached me. You may have taken a vital piece of my life away from me, because Ron is a piece of me. Why? Why did you give me this, instead of what I asked? Was it so bad to want to take you to the world with me? How did I not see it coming? It almost seemed as if you were satisfied with me, that you'd accepted me, that you were already my friend. I don't understand, and I will never understand why. I can't bear to meet you, with that strange gesture of holding down words, with troubled eyes. Don't try to feel regret, you kept on with this to the last consequences, until you managed to take him away from me. You lost that woman who you wait for in the window and you want everyone else to lose too. That's bad, you're fundamentally bad; even with your loyalty and bravery, your insides are eaten out by resentment. You destroyed our chance, you destroyed our afternoons of music, you destroyed whatever was growing inside me for you. Snape, snake, perverse, resentful._

_I can't forgive you, not this. So many years between Death Eaters and conspirators dried out your conscience, blinded you, devoured your mercy. And the worst thing is that you don't even have a reason to offer me. I quit, I quit your company, I quit your poison and your ghosts that will never leave you alone._

* * *

Not even once had he stopped to think about her, he hadn't actually cared; he'd wanted to infect their love, he wanted to tear it apart. He never thought of Granger, he never imagined her tears hidden in the bookshelves, never saw her wet face and his eyes now sharp, piercing through his.

He remembered that time when Albus had told him he disgusted him and he knew that, were he still alive, he would have repeated it at that moment. With depressing irony, he saw he had done it again, he had fucked it up again. Every good thing his hands touched ended up fucked up. Bravo, Severus! A flawless display of your gifts.

He laid down on the bed, without any intentions of getting back up on the remaining of the arrest; the trial was in two days and Hermione wouldn't be with him.

He had tried to apologise, but as soon as she saw him, she left with a violent air, barely contained.

_Why?_ He questioned himself: because he didn't want to see her with Weasley, smiling, getting full of children and kisses, turning into a different woman, one that he wouldn't be able to reach. Getting the life he could never achieve.

He had given so much for Lily and yet hadn't learned anything; again he had let himself be possessed by envy and his compulsion of making everyone around him unhappy. As unhappy as he was.

Only then he understood that greed had overtaken him, that he had wanted her for him, despite how abhorrent that wish was. Him, an old man contrasted with Granger's youth. Him, who had been her teacher, who met her when she was a child, who saw her grow up. It was disgusting, repugnant, maybe one of the most despicable crimes he had dared to commit. The mere fact of having yearned for her. It didn't matter that Weasley was a moron, he couldn't compare to him.

And yet, in between the mud around him, he admitted he wasn't completely sorry, that deep down he was still glad he had removed the redhead from Granger's life.

He should have definitely died in the Shrieking Shack, it was the worthiest end he could aspire, it was the only way he had to pay for his stupidity and take some dignity to his grave.

* * *

He hadn't moved from his room in the past ten hours, he didn't want to bother her more than he already had. His stomach growled and he'd lost the ability to sleep. He watched her over and over, bringing her back in his mind, the exact shade of her eyes, her face's darkening at his crime. Lily and Granger, one next to the other, both of them joined in the same memory of seeing him destroying his human bonds.

He himself was amazed at his instinct of treachery.

He looked lazily at the watch; the next day, at that hour more or less, he would be getting ready for the trial. The sun had almost disappeared from the sky, the night was conquering the infinite clouds and stars.

He heard noises on the first floor, and masculine voices. He went down the stairs with a fearful shock and the bad sting of his intuition.

She was in the house's threshold, carrying two brown cases, one in each hand. She looked at him for a long time with her reptilian eyes, with a shade of hate that came from the deepest part of her. He'd never expected that Granger would look at him like that. He felt like trash.

Potter entered with seriousness and studied the two persons in front of him. Hermione irradiated such hostility, uncharacteristic of her, Snape was pale to abnormality and seemed shrunken by a vague illness. He knew what had happened between them; Hermione had written to him asking him to pick her up, and their stormy faces confirmed the letter's story. He watched them with caution, without truly knowing how to act.

"Good evening, Professor Snape."

The man inhaled noisily, face rigid, as if made of cold wax.

"I'm ready, let's go, Harry. I can't stand being here a minute longer."

His friend left without looking back, as if no one had lived in the house apart from her; she carried her suitcases with strong arms and resolute disdain. Potter watched Snape; he found it strange that his dark, tired eyes followed Hermione until she left his line of vision. He thought he saw in them something that left his body cold, something that he had already seen in the past.

"Are you ready for the trial?" he asked, without managing to completely hide his annoyed tone.

"Yes."

"I'll come here to pick you up in the afternoon to take you to the Ministry. Review your declaration."

Then silence came. The half-blood looked at the place where Hermione had disappeared.

"She's really hurt, let some time pass and she may forgive you."

Snape averted his eyes, uncomfortable and irritated.

"Goodbye, Potter."

"Goodbye, professor, take care," the boy closed the door behind him with quiet humility.

* * *

He looked at himself in the mirror for a long time, as if he was looking at an old photo of some ancestor, of a life before, of a man that wasn't him.

He understood he was alone and that it was his fault.

Snape normally didn't allow himself to feel sadness; he was always busy thinking, going some place to the other, and he lived with the pain from his past like a dim shadow that accompanied him, but one he never dared to look directly. And there he was, with his inner darkness, with the eclipse that always covered his eyes. He had hurt Lily, he had hurt Granger, he didn't even want to know why.

_What did I do to deserve this?_

The girl asked him in his mind once again. Nothing, Granger had just been kind, loving, merciful. But she was wrong for him, Granger would leave like everyone else had left and he already hated her for that. He was getting his revenge on her, because she wanted Weasley and not him.

In front of his reflection, he dared to discover himself. Where had his usual pride and disdain for humanity gone? He let himself be demolished in front of his image, the one he hated, the one he had always hated, since he was a child and he knew himself hopelessly ugly and lanky with a huge nose. Incurably unpleasant, lacking something everyone else had, without any chance of Lily loving him, and provided with innate wickedness he sometimes couldn't contain.

He wanted to kill himself or be killed, he wanted to be a sudden, cold memory for the ones that knew him, because he hated them all and he hated himself most of all, himself and that miserably perverse instinct of sinking and wanting to sink everyone else with him.

* * *

**NT:** Don't worry, this is not a Romione fic, and things still have a long way to go :)


	24. Eye for an Eye

**Disclaimer**: All this belongs to Rowling and Gato Azul.

* * *

**24\. Eye for an Eye**

Potter stood in the house's threshold, hearing movement upstairs. He called the man again; his voice died down in the darkened room. Dim steps climbed down the stairs; the grieving man seemed as if he were in a funeral, pale, mute, consumed by an evident night of insomnia and anguish.

"How are you?"

"That doesn't concern you. Let's go."

They didn't speak at all during the journey. Potter's words travelled in the silent spaces between them, scattered uselessly.

They entered the Ministry, in the underground turmoil, in the titanic, colossal architecture's bright light. The hearing room didn't have any empty seat, many people had come motivated by curiosity and morbidity for the final trial of Severus Snape. The half-blood was separated from Potter and put inside a sharp cage in the middle of the room, where everyone could see him. Snape raised his old stone's face, of cold indifference and apathy; he didn't care what they might do with him, and he grimaced his thin lips. His face looked like a mask of disdain and disgust to each person present in the audience. There wasn't a trace of the vulnerability that could be perceived in him at the last hearing.

In the highest part of the jury's seats was Kingsley, the new minister, accompanied by the registrar that directed the hearing like the last occasions. A general murmur filled the room. By the high windows, they let some dementors in that stood in the roof, held back by the warden's Patronus. The apparition of those creatures caused some unease on the public.

"I hereby start the last session of the accused Severus Snape's trial," the Minister's voice was strong and clear.

Many former Death Eaters that were captured testified against him; most of them confirmed he had been Voldemort's right hand and that Snape constantly took pleasure in misleading Dumbledore and spying under his nose. One even mentioned he had told Tom Riddle the prophecy that had led him to the Potters.

Harry paled in his seat slowly as those battered men appeared on the stand one by one, with their reddened eyes, with the same ashen shade of their skin, with the same dirty, messy hair every Azkaban prisoners wore. The registrar frowned, slightly defiant.

"Do you have anything to say in your defence, Mr Snape, presumed innocent?"

The alluded man bared his teeth like a rabid dog, and with poisonous, irate voice he mumbled he didn't have any intentions of defending himself against that 'presumed judge' and their jury-wannabe. Harry hid his head in his hands for a few moments.

"Well, I think we have enough motives to give Severus Snape a long stay in Azkaban. Your past declarations, Mr Potter, had lacked any meaning. For the man you're trying to defend I hope this time you have something more solid."

The Potion Master looked at some point in the seats where he had discovered Minerva and Lovegood next to Hermione. He hadn't expected to see her there, he was startled for a moment. He didn't like the idea of her seeing him stuck in that cage.

Potter walked to the middle of the room, in the lowest part, where Snape was. He took out a small vial from his jacket and faced the crowd, with darkened face and dim eyes.

"I had retained this respecting the professor's intimacy, but I won't allow you to incarcerate him if he isn't guilty."

He poured the murky liquid in the rich, marble pensive and the audience could see the big images of the jailed man's mind; they could hear the vagabond voices from the past, hovering in his head.

* * *

Two girls in a park, one redhead, with big eyes of an unnatural shade of green. McGonagall shifted in her seat. Hogwarts' kids coming and going from the Hat's scrutiny, the Houses' names yelled in the middle of the Great Hall, Dumbledore's image. The crowd seemed to freeze, the dementors moved in the roof like dark winds underwater. A kid named James Potter pushed Severus in a hallway, he had arrogant eyes. The time in the memories changed, Lily kissed a guy with messy hair next to a fountain, they hold each other's hands. Harry felt as if someone had squeezed his throat. Minerva had put a hand over her mouth, in her firm eyes, something is coming undone. The secretary tilted his head, drowsy. _Don't kill me. _Again, the eternal shape of Dumbledore, his big frame, his sharp eyes. _That was not my intention._ Snape begged, kneeled; Snape looked at himself, almost without recognizing himself, without recognizing that younger, supplicant version of his past. He searched for her, for Granger, between the crowd; the multiple heads stuck together didn't let him see her. Lily yelled, the half-blood shivered against the bars, Harry lost the last tips of colour from his face. The dementors shifted again, getting a bit closer to the barrier that held them, and then went back up, blinded. _A part of Voldemort lives inside him._ The registrar supported his head against one of his hand, half-closing his eyes; a small frown had appeared between his eyebrows. _You must be the one who kills me, Severus._ Snape experienced again the same anger from that day, boiling from his stomach. Minerva closed her eyes tightly, shaking her head, her hands where rigid over her cloak. _Only that way you will achieve Voldemort's full trust._ A wave started in the human streams, a movement of hands, of pale faces and lost gazes and some whispers; his voice extended, his rotten hand moved the air. The caged man looked up to the crowd, some watched him and shivered, but he wasn't looking for them, there was something else, something that seemed to shine in his face. _And my soul? What will happen to my soul?_ Minerva lowered her lids in the climax, an invisible hand had taken the air away from her. _You have kept him alive so that he can die at the right moment? _The registrar looked elsewhere, anywhere else that wouldn't involve watching that infamous scene. Hagrid, gigantic Hagrid, who sat one way and then another without finding peace. _Always_, Snape's voice whispered like a sentence to himself, like an undeniable, permanent noise, like the silent talk of those who had no voice, of a mountain, of colossal stones. _Always_. Snape, the one that seemed to have so few qualities, the driest, coldest, who ended up having that candle inside him, that small, sunny particle that lightened up everything, that had consumed him completely in his love's rush. The registrar shook his head disapprovingly, rubbing his face with his hand. People shifted, waved their hands, turned elsewhere, sinking their eyes in the blue, dense image. It was cold; the dementors drew their shapes against the contained air of the room. The grieving man fell when he faced Lily's death, those green eyes were still opened, Harry was brushed with the memory's raw hand, he still trembled after so many years. The stoic, snake wizard was a storm's scream, a crude, marsh's yell, a pathetic wandering like souls astray. Minerva raised her gaze and looked at him. Lightning shone behind him and lit his face, his face contracted by frenetic stupor, in an astonishing loss. The whole room watched as boy and man meld in front of them, in human waters. And Snape's yell, it was like that lightning, like a hot gap of light that painted his memories. McGonagall's hands seemed to have left her will and flapped everywhere. The exhibited man, the naked man in the cage looked at them as if they were a sad bunch of stuffed animals in a locker. Their faces were white, some wet, and he told himself he didn't care, that no amount of tears mattered. He was disgusted, of them and of himself, and he wanted to disappear. But there was something that despite his shame, made him uneasy. He looked for her again in between the withered faces; there she was, next to McGonagall, her hair was pulled back in a braid and she was as pale as everyone else. He was repulsed, because his memories weren't a plea of help, and yet he waited with shame, with misery, for her to deign herself to look at him after watching the memories. She was crying, her face was wet, she took her hands to it and cleaned them with sadness, as if she was doing something indecent. He could only aspire to their eyes' meeting; of all that people, she was the only one that truly knew how to look at him.

"Silence," the registrar ordered, voice helpless. "Silence," he was forced to repeat.

There were no more images; the audience watched each other, hiding their faces, quieting down.

"Anything else to show us, Mr Potter?"

Harry felt suddenly weak, as if he were to crumble in the middle of the room.

"Do you think there's a need for anything else?"

The registrar seemed uncomfortable.

"It was emotive, Mr Potter, too much I'd say, but still not enough."

_Bastard!_ Someone yelled from some lost point in the audience.

"Silence," he ordered drily. "Is there anything else, Mr Potter?"

"One thing," the boy whispered, travelling to his original position where he took a big frame he had hidden there. He carried with effort the heavy object to the middle of the room and supported it against a chair, moving clumsily.

"Albus Dumbledore wants to testify for Severus Snape. Professor, please," Harry bent in front of the empty frame as if he was peeking through a window. A very familiar face emerged from the dark.

"Good evening," the painted blue eyes seemed almost alive.

The registrar squinted, sitting back on his chair, mistrustful.

"Albus Dumbledore, what a surprise. What do you have to tell us?"

The painted man looked around, serene, immutable as he had always been.

"Where's Severus?"

"Behind you, behind your painting I mean."

"Good," his blue gaze fixed on the registrar. "I ordered Severus to kill me, he didn't do it on his own accord. I also ordered him many other things, very dangerous, possibly lethal, and he fulfilled each one of them to please me and to serve the Order as he has been doing for the past seventeen years."

"Then the matter at hand here is that this man turned into a killer by your orders and then, he's not guilty? Isn't he a murderer anyway?"

"He is not a traitor, Mr. registrar. What he did was an act of mercy, because I begged him to kill me, my hand was rotting."

"This is absurd," Harry interrupted, but Dumbledore's head nodded, asking him to stay away from the discussion.

"And what should we do according to you, Mr Dumbledore?"

"Let him go. While Severus did take my life, he paid his when Voldemort's snake bit his throat, don't you think? An eye for an eye."

The registrar closed his eyes for a moment; he felt the crowd's eyes on him.

"If you were alive, perhaps I would call you in a trial session for every crime he committed and hasn't paid for. But you are right. Severus Snape is absolved from his charges of treason and homicide. He will have to come to court to report twice a year for the next three years. This trial is finished, you may leave."

The cage opened and Snape walked for the first time without any debts, his first steps as a free man.

Many of the juries stopped to look at him as he left the bars. A good part of the room followed him with their eyes. Harry was waiting for him in the middle of the place. He extended a hand, offering a truce, but Snape didn't take it.

"To exhibit me like that, Potter, is unworthy even for you. I guess you're quite satisfied now."

The boy wanted to speak, but nothing came out of his tight throat.

"Son, Harry didn't have any other option to free you."

"Everything is excusable to you when it comes to Potter; I see death has been kind to you, you're just like always. Now if you excuse me, I have to hide before the press devours the crumbs of intimacy Potter left me."

Rita Skeeter ran downstairs, her green quill shaking behind her like a fencing sword, and a photographer tried to focus them despite the distance separating them.

The grieving figure seemed to turn into smoke, pushing his way between the crowd that watched him speechless; some tried to stop him, one man even spit on his shoes, it was clear someone was always going to doubt him. Most of them looked at him with an exasperating mixture of admiration and fear.

In his fight to reach the exit, he looked for her again; he didn't see her between the wizard groups, not even Minerva. But the human boiling and Skeeter's heels following him forced him to leave the place quickly.

* * *

_Severus Snape, that name flutters in my head every day and I still see him kneeling on the floor with Harry's mum. I can't stand it. I see his clutched eyes, full of tears, I hear his screams from the day he was tortured. I don't know what to do, I can't stop crying, for him and me, for what he did to me._

_Why? Why did he hurt me? Professor Snape, I want to forgive you, but I shouldn't._

_Why did I let myself be dragged into the painful dilemma of his life? My strange, stormy Professor Snape. Why do I call him mine, if a splintered part of me hates him? You never even felt for me a piece of genuine regard, if you had, you wouldn't have betrayed me. Why, professor Snape? I'm just asking why._


	25. The Golem

**Disclaimer**: Everything belongs to Rowling and Gato Azul.

A bit of Romione, but don't worry, it'll be over soon.

**Warning**: Suicide ideation, be safe guys.

* * *

**25\. The Golem**

Two dense months had passed for the half-blood. He was still in the house that had tied him to Granger; he had sold the one in Spinner's End and unbelievably bought the building of flower paintings, of upholstered walls, of dubiously-originated cassettes and CDs.

The same voices that had spun around the bushy girl remained in his ears, singing Hermione's absence, an absence which he couldn't untie himself from, which he didn't want to give up. He ate in the same table, but now in front of a chair where nobody sat, he listened to the same songs. Even, to his shame and disgrace, he had dared to read the storybook she'd forgotten. He couldn't find the vanilla's veil anymore, the sweet floating smell that'd sheltered him before in his convalescent afternoons and flickering fevers.

Even for him it was hard to avoid the small mountain of remorse that oppressed his lungs.

How could he admit the Gryffindor's absence was more insidious than he thought it would be? How could he confess the nights of silence, the dreams where he saw her, always mute, always on fire? How could he dare to even tolerate the idea of what was happening in him? He told himself constantly: not again, not with her. And yet he passed time thinking about her, about her body's frame in the spaces of that house. With a sudden terror and euphoric shiver, he felt her in the music's edge, in the notes that exploded in the song's climax; he sensed her in the vase paintings, turned into another invisible verse in the books she left behind. He recalled her while peeking through the window and waiting to see her silhouette, her bushy, stubborn hair. Then he sat on the kitchen, with a cup of coffee she'd prepared, and put his head in his hands as if he wanted to hide in a pit.

* * *

_I have looked for you, Ron._

_My Ron, with the name of alcohol, that reminds me of a warm fall of water in my stomach, a fizzy, sweet flavour of fruits too ripe. My dear Ron, I'm still waiting for your travelling words, I'm still waiting for you to answer the letters that I certainly wrote this time, the letters that no pale, treacherous hand will steal. I already told everyone, I already passed Snape's name everywhere in the Burrow as if it was the name of a coming storm, or a natural disaster. But you still don't reply to me and I'm surprised and I'm scared that you're so irrationally sentimental, my Ron. Nobody believed me at the beginning; Ginny glared at me constantly, like a razor's glint, your mother's hair seemed redder by the outraged fury on her face, everyone seemed like walking fires, lightened up against me, but as soon as I said 'Snape' the fire extinguished. Snape, a word that always announces disgraces, that is a good reason to explain any misfortune._

_But you're still quiet in my dark vision, you're in silence in the dim light, and I can't see you._

_My dear Ron, I never said anything you think I said, and I'm hurt that you know me so little, that you could've believed Snape and I are the same person. That you mistake his voice for mine. Maybe deep down you think you have to abandon me, maybe deep down you have convinced yourself that I don't love you and that it must be that way because you're not enough. But you are, Ron. How wise was Snape, putting his hand in your biggest weakness. My dear Ron, I'll never forgive him for that, even if he kneeled and cried, even if they marked his forehead, even if he was condemned to be himself, to the very end, to be Snape. The natural disaster, the bad omen, the excuse for misfortunes._

* * *

Pessimism and crying were for the weak, for the useless ones wandering on the streets shrinking and looking down, like asking for help, but without asking, because they were too weak even for that.

Snape wasn't good at being weak, he didn't like to ask for anything, because his ego wore down in vain. And his ego was one of his biggest possessions, in fact, the one he fed the most.

He didn't ask for Granger, he didn't kneel before the offended virgin's eyes, before the hair like foam, of golden curls. He didn't beg the virgin so she wouldn't banish him from paradise; like a proud sinner, he left without a confession, to give himself away to the small, solitary hell of flower paintings and melancholic songs. He was resigned to have to resign himself, because everything was useless, he knew it by experience; to ask for mercy only shrinks one's soul, only oppress and degrades it. It was better to bear the sin and the punishment with stoicism. So he swallowed Granger's absence in big mouthfuls, he let it in and install itself in between his ribs and blow coldness in his blood, in the centre of his heart, that despite the years and weariness was still red, still warm, still lightened up, this time for someone else than Lily.

Snape wondered if everyone else was like him, if there was something always burning in them, always turning into whips of fire. Why, if he was a dungeon inhabitant, a cold gargoyle, Voldemort' and Dumbledore's Golem? Why did he always have a bird deep down, a tiny ball of nerves that vibrated in each corner? Why was he always furious and frustrated and chronically unhappy?

And he looked at himself in the mirror and got surprised at the painful stupor that stained his gaze; only like that, when he looked at the mirror, he realized how much was the girl's absence squeezing him, because he recognized it on the eyebags that extended like cancer, a wounded animal's weakness, something lacking, a withdrawn absence.

He looked at the kitchen knives like individuals, like actual voices, and he imagined them stuck inside his veins. But he couldn't die, because it was too sentimental to choose that exact moment and that exact way of doing so. Because the press would eat him alive and Skeeter would take a picture of his body on the floor and everyone would see it in the morning edition. Those fuckers. He would wait until the magic community's focus drew away from him to aspire to a three-sentences obituary forgotten on the third page. To reach Granger like bitter but flashing news, so she could say he was a strange man that hadn't learned how to live and that was why he disappeared. Because, good or bad, he didn't want Hermione to find herself in the middle of his gory storm, he didn't want her to discover herself as the unholy dagger that opened his wrists. Besides, Granger wasn't the only reason, she was just the final period of an old list, extended by the years and Lily's absence.

* * *

_I'm gone, but that doesn't mean I don't love you. I'm here, still waiting for you, waiting for your voice made words. I had to look for my parents, but I still wish that one owl carries your letter, I still yearn for the wing's fluttering outside my window and to find your blue gaze peering mischievously between lines. Do you think that, if I write a lot, if you put together my letter one over the other, will you forget those weeks of silence and uncertainty? Ron, if I could make the envelopes float over your redhead and draw a loving circle, if I could make them rain like feathers from your roof, would you love me again?_

* * *

Minerva felt her bones going soft, her next step faltering. She knew that black figure in front of her too much, she saw it in her nightmares and her regret's vault.

"Severus, dear Severus."

Her hand reached a stiff shoulder, to a small crash against the black wall of Snape's eyes.

"I didn't come here to socialize. I left some of my things in my room."

It wasn't hard to guess the insomnia nights in the colourless, long face, in the silent pain, in the weary, rattled gaze.

"Severus, are you unwell? How are you? Where are you living?"

The man didn't answer any of the three questions, he just raised his brow, causing in Minerva an annoying and depressing _deja vu_.

"I haven't touched your old office; everything is just like you left it. Where are you working? You will always have your place and your job here."

The students walked around dressed in that same robe, watching furtively over their heads, to see the hero, martyr and traitor.

"I just came here to pick up my belongings, I'm not insinuating I need you, Minerva."

The woman withdrew her hand and looked around, suddenly understanding the bridge between her and the man was gone. That knowledge left her disoriented for a few moments.

"I just want to—"

"Wash your conscience. It is as easy as just forget, Minerva, but you Gryffindors are so idiotic and hypocrites about those things."

Young Potter left one of the doors in the long hallway and looked at the dark, disconcerting clot that his two former professors were forming. And he told himself that sometimes luck was a machine too precise. Just at the right moment, he left his only class of the day and Snape did his surely last return to Hogwarts.

The trio's forced conversation; the heavy, thorny exchange of words was slow and hard, until the point of frowns and grimaces. Snape wanted to retreat in a quick, painless flight, but Potter cut his way on purpose.

"Tell me where you are living, or I swear, professor Snape, I'll follow you if I have to."

Minerva joined the invasive interrogatory.

Both wanted to be sure they would be seeing him soon, his dark face of a weary ghost that made them feel as if he could disappear, as if he was torn apart, as if he would just die like in a cold exhalation.

Finally, Potter managed to rip out the confession he hadn't changed houses, that he was still in the same place he and Granger had lived in.

* * *

Potter saw in him a hint of old water, a grey trail in his gaze. Potter wasn't too brilliant, but he was good with hunches, with a bunch of invisible links, with weightless steps. Potter had a fulminant green in his eyes and saw the tainted glass in Snape's gaze. And the presence of something dark and overwhelming touched him, gave him soft pushes; the half-blood carried on his back a bad shadow and Harry could smell it, smell its cold mark, its disturbing omen.

His questions were like fingers looking for the half-blood; he threw them to his face like smoke and the man shook his pale head, nose wrinkled, crossing his arms, colourless every second that passed.

And then, when he chased him to his house, when he insisted on sewing himself on him like a prison's warden, Snape asked the question. Harry stood still in the middle of the dirty rain; the tall, grieving man also stopped. They looked at each other with glassy eyes, in between an instant, tiny war between their gazes.

_Where is Granger?_

Snape had asked. Harry thought about the lost letters, abouy Ronald's frenetic expression, abouy how he talked desperate and angry and then sobbing while exhaling Hermione's name everywhere, like a tiny cloud of red dust. Wondering about her.

"After what happened, I don't think you have any sincere interest in Hermione. I mean, you didn't care about hurting her."

He had almost forgotten those old, hostile and short conversation with his professor. Those black smoke eyes emitted fire; Snape frowned his lips and seemed thinner and older when he started to walk again.

"What would you know," he heard the deep hiss from him. Snape reminded him, at that moment, of a tree's fallen leaf.

Watching his back, watching his worn, melancholic cloak, Harry knew it. The cold wind sneaked inside him; rain drew tears on his face. The long street was empty and full of puddles, the gravel reflected weakly the wet, greyish lights. He knew the reason for that question, he knew of the anxiety, of the lonely wait, of the hopeful peeks through the window that were contained in that mere question. That was somehow too much for him, he couldn't take the next step; he stood still, hair dripping. In front of him, Snape's shadow was getting smaller. Harry told himself that Snape's life (who reminded him in that moment of a wet crow, or a rag) was too strange and twisted, too much if he wanted to stay alive and sane, too ironic. And he denied it on the inside, feeling water sneaking in his shoes, socks wet and heaviness inside as he watched the grieving man, walking like a soldier on the puddles. One never knew what Snape carried in his cloak, the marks on his skin, the words he swallowed, the love he confined like tombstones and that consumed him like a disease.

But Harry knew it when he asked him about her, about Hermione and the letters' incident started to make sense.

* * *

_Hermione:_

_Ginny told me and my mum and Harry, you know, about the letters and that bloody bat. I should've imagined it, I don't know why I didn't think about that. Well, you know me. I hadn't answered because I didn't know what to say. I'm not mad, don't worry about that. So you're in Australia? Have you seen any kangaroos?_

_I'm training with the _Chudley Cannons_, so I can't go back and see you. Do you plan to stay there for a long time? I found out you won the trial, we should start another one against the bat, you know, for the identity steal, don't you think? You're not seeing him anymore, I guess. How could he do that? Only someone as shitty and bitter as him could dare. Whatever, he must now be around McGonagall, asking for the Defence's job._

_Hermione, there's something I want to tell you, but I don't know if it's alright to say it in a letter, you know? It's important and I don't know how will you take it; the thing is we have been separated and I, well, I thought you didn't love me anymore, I was angry, more like furious. But I love you, Hermione._

_Ron W._

* * *

Hermione sat on a chair in the kitchen, that new, modern kitchen so different from her last house, and so different from the house arrest one. The white walls made her feel alone and cold. Her dad was still angry, he didn't speak to her; once she discovered him watching her from the threshold with pained resentment in his eyes, and she realized she was about to cry, then David left without saying a word, putting back his angry expression.

Just like that, drinking coffee and thinking about her dad, her professor's memory came back to her. First, it was small, growing like a firefly. She looked at him as if through a thin paper skin, next to the window, with his sad figure, sleeping on a couch with a runes book. Crying for Lily Potter like one cries for a lost country, as if he wasn't Snape, but any other common man. She realized that what really hurt her was that Snape didn't want her as much as she wanted him. That he didn't consider her a friend, that she meant so little to him, he didn't care about hurting her. She wondered where he was, what was he doing. Whether he still listened to music. Her music, the one surrounded him like an old man's painting, a man from a story. Every time she thought about him she had the sensation that life wasn't fair, that they were tied to a reality that could've been better, that could've been happy.

* * *

Snape found in one of Granger's drawers a letter he hadn't seen before; he was surprised when he noticed it was addressed to him.

_My dear professor Snape,_

He felt warm and struck for a moment. He read in silence as cold winds howled outside the window and pulled the trees' leaves. The girl's voice surrounded him like a perfume, like thick water that sprouted from his insides. An old pain, like a war wound, expanded in his chest.

_I would like to talk to you about everything…_

He remembered that time he had found a letter from Lily and he told himself his life was inhabited by the shadows of the people he had lost.

_Professor Snape, try to move on, but not forget, because that's not possible. I'll be with you._

And Snape knew that, were he less old and less tired, he would've cried in that exact moment, he would cry for the girl's absence, he would cry for having hurt her. But it didn't matter anymore.

_Your pupil that esteems you and cares for you._

Snape felt an overwhelming mix of happiness and pain; he let himself be drowned by them, his eyes were hot and wet. The cold fluttering outside the window made him shiver.

She made him shiver, and he felt like the beast of that _muggle_ storybook, shattered by a mere rose, by a woman with big eyes.


	26. The Glorious Vortex

**Disclaimer**: Everything here belongs to Rowling and Gato Azul.

* * *

**26\. The Glorious Vortex**

_It wasn't easy, but your "plan of reintegration to the community" helped us to finally get him out of his hole. Of course, professor Snape said everything about this reeked of Dumbledore and you, but he still had to come with me to the Auror's training; apparently, he preferred that over working in a lab at St. Mungo. As you already know, we've been here for a bit over a month; you asked me to tell you how has the professor been doing and that's why I'm writing this letter. He was actually transferred to the main ranks; the instructor he was assigned to said he has little to learn. That doesn't surprise me; he made the rookies suffer during training, I could almost say he was a bit satisfied for making us bite the dust._

_The preparation is not easy, they only let us leave the Auror's camp on the weekends, which is good in Snape's case, who probably uses his free time to get drunk and grieve in his house. On Mondays he comes back pale and really quiet; he gets a bit better as the week passes, he turns back to his natural, haughty state, and I'm not trying to criticise him._

_Training is normally in an open field in the middle of rain or snow. Many have left, but nothing seems to affect the professor; actually, it doesn't affects me either, the Horrocrux's hunt was worse than this. I won't see him much from now on, at least until they transfer me to the main ranks. I think he can manage on his own; he doesn't look very happy, but he hasn't actually ever looked happy. He's practically all week locked here so I don't think there's anything to worry about. Has he answered any of your letters?_

_Without anything else to say for the moment, goodbye, professor._

_H. P._

* * *

Harry soaked his bread in his milk, watched it dissolve in the white, warm liquid, and put it in his mouth hurriedly as some fat, wet crumbs slid on his cheek. Snape made a disgusted grimace, the boy cleaned himself with shame and they kept on eating in silence.

Around them the other recruits filled their mouths and talked, a dull murmur bouncing on the walls. Snape avoided the green gaze and concentrated on splitting his bun and putting in inside his soup. Harry looked at him, stubbornly.

"And how have you been?"

"I have to see you every day, how do you think I am, Potter?"

The boy lowered his eyes to his milk cup and cleaned the table with a hand. Next to him, a skinny, redhead instructor shivered, wrapped in a worn cloak. He met the wizard's awkward gaze for a few seconds and then he turned once more to Snape. The man shook his food reluctantly; the yellow light made him seem even more sallow.

"And Granger?"

Harry trembled in his chair. He knew Snape had held that question for long weeks; it had been like a spark, a small bolt between them.

"In Australia, her parents are there."

Snape's hand kept drawing soft circles in his plate, his eyes soured.

"When did she leave?"

"Soon after your trial, Snape."

"Mr. to you, Potter."

Harry, uneasy by the thorny silence, let himself be absorbed by a half-dead fly that crossed the table. A few minutes later, when there was no more milk in his cup, the half-blood spoke again.

"Is she planning on coming back?"

"I don't know, she says her parents are angry with her and they don't want to let her go."

Prince sipped the last spoon of his soup and stood, leaving without saying goodbye. Harry looked at his long frame and funeral's clothes disappear in the middle of the morning hustle.

* * *

The thin master supported his weight against the cold wall of his small room. The whole building had a smell of decay, of rancid times, penetrating everything, every furniture, every mattress. Outside, some kids sang gibberish about Merlin's knickers. Stupid, vulgar brats. Whatever, he told himself as he laid down on the austere bed. At least in the main ranks they would give him a better room, away from all these idiotic boys and those nosy gazes that chased him since the day of his trial. Thanks to Potter. It was all thanks to Potter; he didn't have the slightest doubt that this reintegration to society sentence had been created by that boy, by Minerva and by Albus' painting, who seemed unable to accept that the essence of being dead was precisely not interfering anymore in the world.

What was the reason why he still woke up to live a life he wasn't interested in anymore, not even he knew it; he let himself be dragged wherever like a golem, all his life he had done what Albus or the Dark Lord had asked of him. It was probably just a habit. To be an Auror wasn't so disadvantageous: any day now someone would throw an Avada at him and that'd be really convenient; besides, he could also return the favour to those Death Eaters that had cut his face. Even, at some point, he thought that being close to Potter meant he'd manage to see Granger again.

But no.

* * *

_…__. My instructor says he'll promote me son, the hexes we learnt at the war have been really useful. Changing the subject, Hermione, there's something I want to tell you, I hope you won't get mad, it's about Snape. He's asking about you, he's still in the house arrest, I heard rumours that he bought it. Doesn't that seem weird to you? I think (you'll hate me for this) he misses you and that he regrets what he did, you get me? He doesn't say it, but one can guess. I know I shouldn't be speaking for him, but after everything he has done for me and my mother, it's the least I can do. Why don't you let him explain himself? Maybe he had a reason. Please, Hermione._

_Please, Hermione._

_H.P._

* * *

Hermione stood from the kitchen chair; her parents were in the living room, sitting on the same sofa, cuddling against one another. They were whispering, and she feared they'd be talking about her. Her mum turned with a loving expression on her face.

"'Mione, come here and sit. Mail's here, Harry and Ron wrote to you."

She sat next to Jean; the woman caressed her arm, David was still silent, but he smiled weakly. He was trying to extinguish the hate he still felt.

"Who is Severus Snape? One of your classmates?"

"A former professor," the girl answered, uncomfortable. "How did you know his name?"

"He also wrote to you."

They gave her the yellowish envelope and Hermione recognized the half-blood's tight, cursive handwriting. And yet she didn't open the letter; her parents seemed to want her to do it, maybe moved by curiosity and by the implicit mistrust they had fely towards her, as if they thought she could escape through the window and never come back again.

* * *

Monk's life, soldier's life, monastery's life.

Snape was used to the rigour in the military service to Voldemort or Dumbledore. His father had taught him that since he was very small, to walk straight and in steady, long, regular strides, with an austere, serious expression.

Nothing was new to him in the Auror's camp, the alleged instructors yelled a lot and got drunk on the weekends. He got drunk too, but in a very different way, alone, hidden in his cave, whispering poems to Lily, hearing Granger's cassettes. Then he swallowed the whole bottle and went to sleep.

He went back to the field on Mondays, to seclusion and long walks in the tundra, between snow and grass half-burnt by the cold. Potter, even if he considered him useless, was, in fact, one of the most prepared rookies; he had good reflexes and was quick with his wand too. The war, after all, had left a mark on him too. When they praised him for his merits the boy smiled softly, almost as if he was embarrassed, and said it was no big deal. Then Snape detected a hole in his illusion and thought that, in some small things, Potter junior wasn't exactly like his father.

He was soon ascended to the certified Auror ranks; Potter, probably for his fame, was ascended a few weeks after him. Those long days of confinement and bunk beds ended, just to be replaced by long lines in the Ministry and boring meetings where everyone talked around a map, presenting their strategies. In the beginning, Potter got very close to him, as if he was scared by those exalted yelling and their theories about what would be the best thing to do. With time he got closer to the debating circle and soon he was in the middle, talking with a strong voice and the others, the rest of the Aurors, listened carefully, delighted of having him with them. Snape watched them from a corner, arms crossed, apathetic and sullen. Sometimes they asked for his opinion and a bunch of faces turned towards him; he just said anything half growling and they soon left him alone.

* * *

The previous leader of the Aurors had died, like many others, during the war. To choose another one was something they had to do, soon. Many of them thought immediately of Harry Potter, nevermind his youth. On the day of the meeting they choose him immediately, unanimously. He had saved them, his lightning scar marked him, his beautiful, lively gaze turned him into a leader that was easy to appreciate.

But Potter didn't accept the job; he refused kindly, irrevocably, voice and stance firm. And then he said, before silence covered them all, that he thought the best candidate was Severus Snape. No one talked; for several minutes the only noise present was the bustle outside the small room.

The boy kept talking, he said they couldn't waste such useful knowledge about the Death Eater's inner organization. Snape knew how they thought, how they behaved, how they moved after having been so close to them for so many years…

Many doubted that choice, but Potter's insistence and their compulsion for pleasing him took them to the point of accepting, even despite Snape's stunned and annoyed face. They agreed he'd be the temporary leader of that position as everything went back to normal and took in more rookies. The voting was unanimously again, and Snape's face appeared in the morning papers.

* * *

Hermione opened Harry's letter; the boy had sent her a snippet from _The Prophet_, where a picture of Snape between many men appeared, raising his hand with a frown, as if taking an oath as his lips moved. 'Severus Snape named temporal Head Auror. Deserved Honour Or Insane Imprudence?'. She looked for the editor's name and wasn't surprised when she found out it was Rita Skeeter. She looked at the photo again, and remembered those same distant eyes fixed on her. And she felt as if nothing had happened between them, as if she had never known him. Sometimes, as in that exact moment, she couldn't sustain her anger, and those hard features, that vague, sad look managed to soften her, but she didn't open the letter the Potion Master had sent weeks ago. It'd be like betraying Ron and betraying herself.

She read Harry's lines. She could feel his emotion, even across ink and kilometres. He was spending his weekends with the Weasleys and he seemed he'd burst with so much joy, being close to Ginny and Mrs Weasley and Arthur. He said that in the Burrow there was always this orange light and everything was warm and smelled of hot biscuits and clean sheets. And yet, Harry wasn't someone used to absolute happiness, and he got depressed sometimes; Hermione noticed it in some words, in some small details.

And then he'd finally insist again. She would've gotten mad if he wasn't precisely him, her best friend.

_Hermione, you know, Snape...? Well, you know, right? He misses you, he doesn't show it, but I see he hasn't removed those flower paintings you once told me about from the house, I think they remind him of you. He doesn't like me. When he comes to me almost civilized is to ask me if you're coming back, he masks it, wanting to speak of something else. He's Snape, after all._

_Hermione, I'm sorry, for you and Ron, but I'm worried about Snape. I promised I'd keep an eye on him and you're one of the few people he had shown some interest in. I don't want you to get mad at me, but if you think you can forgive him, please listen to him, write a letter to him, if only to complain and insult._

_Please._

_H. P._

The girl frowned a she looked at the black and white picture of a dark-haired man. She wanted to destroy it or put pins on it, maybe paint some horns on it, but she put it in her drawer and got mad at herself for it.

* * *

At the beginning, he had been really angry at Potter's interventions in his life, but the 'Head' position of the Auror Squad had ended up being quite beneficial for him.

He didn't have time for almost anything else; afternoons of drunkenness and self-pity were less and less possible in his timetable, and to keep himself busy was a good antidote for anguish and emptiness. He'd told himself he wanted to be alone, and yet he was stuck inside the big, noisy Ministry building almost every day, with an endless come and go of formal suits and high heels. He filled lots of parchments and wrote detailed explanations of everything someone did there. He trained, organized mock battles and pushed around the subordinates who made any mistakes, that was his favourite part. There he could yell with impunity, at least more than in Hogwarts.

There was so much work, so tiring was the training, that when the day finished and he got home, he fell on the bed and got asleep immediately. But when it wasn't like that, when for some reason he didn't end up exhausted during the day, insomnia bit him the whole night, licked his hand. He hated insomnia.

He hated thinking about her, about how he had driven them away, about how he had ended up digging a hole that separated them from him. He had done it, it was his fault and he had to see that. When Lily married James Potter, when she stopped answering him, he hated her, for a long time he told himself Lily Evans was an ungrateful fool and that someday, when he was strong and humiliated Potter, she would come back and ask for forgiveness. But that never happened. Lily's life ended, he ended in a way. After that, he never believed again in anything he had thought, none of his ideals of superiority. He was shite, that simple, she had been right all this time when she asked him to leave those friends, she had been right to abandon him. Sometimes he hated her a bit, sometimes he got a bit mad at her, but that feeling dissipated soon and made him feel even more miserable.

With Granger it wasn't so different, he was too old to lie to himself; he knew those things had happened because of him. The girl hadn't answered his letter, he supposed she'd never do it in the future.

* * *

Harry Potter was in front of the crowd; his rebellious hair was pulled back and he was also wearing a somewhat old suit from the Weasleys that they'd lent him, one he hadn't had the heart to reject. Everyone was there, to his surprise he even distinguished in the sea of redhead the one of Ronald Weasley, then a small seed of hope bloomed in him. They were called one by one, putting a small, round golden medal on them. Neville Longbottom, a war hero, the snake's killer. The shy boy walked to the podium, almost tripping in the process.

Snape snorted, the audience covered in fancy clothes and made-up smiles clapped. The meeting would've been insufferably fake for him if it hadn't been for the presence of those few Gryffindor boys and some Hogwarts' professors. The Ministry was like that, since the beginning of times. Rita Skeeter shifted on a chair, carrying a pair of gigantic fake eyelashes that managed to disgust him. She watched him for a few seconds with her fake eyelash and a look of gossipy scrutiny. Snape turned his head as if he had smelled dung. He wouldn't have gone to such a stupid reunion if his new job didn't require it, it was important he went to the audiences and post-war award ceremonies and faced the press.

He looked at the red blob that was the Weasleys; they were carrying their best suits, Molly's dress seemed almost wore down, but her round, cheery face dimmed its shortcomings. She was clutching her husband's arm, who was clapping enthusiastically as his younger sons stepped forward and got bestowed. Suddenly Molly's face was wet. Snape, without knowing why, experienced a sudden feeling of both pride and envy at seeing both redheads bow lightly at the audience. Then he wondered if Weasley would go and knock his teeth off after the party. He didn't like the idea, Molly seemed way too moved for such a ridiculous scene. He rose his head to see better; his crooked nose stood among the crowd, which made him seem like a crow stirring the air with its beak. He didn't see her, not with the redhead bunch, nor with Longbottom, nor with the professors. They called Minerva; the old witch walked as always, calm and solemn. They put the medal on her robe's flap. With small, wet eyes she seemed to look for someone among so many faces and she watched him as she put her long hand over her heart. Her cheeks were getting wet, a camera emitted a flash, lighting up Minerva's hard, damp face. The Potion Master went suddenly cold as the woman turned her head back to the audience and bowed slightly, holding her pointy hat. He couldn't hate her, nor could he pretend he still did anymore. He clapped grudgingly as she stood again and went back to her seat. Then her dark eyes went back to him and, when she noticed he was clapping too, they got even wetter, he could almost hear her saying his name among the crowd, drawing him with her lips, and then she got lost in the collage of heads, leaving a warm, painful trail in his chest, between his hands that were still clapping.

Minerva, the cornerstone, the loyal one, almost one with Hogwarts.

"Hermione Jean Granger!" the host yelled, and the Legilimens looked around, expecting her to suddenly appear out of nowhere, from a glorious vortex, with her bushy hair and bronze smile.

"Hermione Granger!"

Someone moved in the tumult and he sharpened his gaze, seized by throbbing anticipation. A redhead paved a way to disappointment, when Ginny Weasley went to the podium to receive the award in her friend's name. Snape slumped on his seat and closed his eyes for a moment, swallowing with difficulty. Someone next to him asked if he was okay and he told them to mind their own business.

What a pity, a sour taste of loss, an invisible stab. He wanted to leave in that exact moment, and he did when they called Potter. Skeeter's photographer chased him to take a picture while he hurriedly left the event; from the seats, Ronald Weasley glared at him with his blue eyes, for a moment he believed he'd get up and chase him. Given his rage, he felt quite cheerful at the thought of a night of pounding Muggle-style, mixed punches and bloody noses. To hell with Molly's crying face. But Weasley looked around and held himself back. He left then, like smoke. He didn't have anything to wait for, he had already been warned he wouldn't be awarded anything, because some sceptical part of the community could be dissatisfied with him not only absolved, but also rewarded.

* * *

**N.T.**: "Any day now someone would throw an Avada at him and that'd be really convenient" is the second funniest line in this story, I relate so hard. I can't wait for you to read the first.


	27. The Stag's Mark

**Disclaimer**: Everything here belongs to Rowling and Gato Azul.

Some more Romione, but it will end soon, I promise. This is another one of my favourite chapters :)

* * *

**27\. The Stag's Mark**

He wanted to open up reality like a membrane, like a curtain of velvet, and remove from nothing her big, round eyes, with the golden disk that were her orbs.

He wanted to pull her out from a wormhole, from a temporal rip, from wherever, from under his table, from between the books. He wanted to weave her, pull her out from air like one of his potion's unknown ingredients.

He opened the Beauty and Beast storybook, as if she would come back only to read it to him again. He looked at the curvy, whimsical drawings; they were, in fact, a bit artistic. Bella hugged the Beast's monstrous, gigantic frame. Snape remembered for a moment that Granger had tried to hug him once, and he told himself once again that he was a moron, even more idiotic than Weasley himself.

Small Bella, with her useless, naïve hug, trying to surround the big silhouette. Poor Granger hadn't been so different, after all.

* * *

Hermione opened the door as she put on some slippers. She tried to brush her hair to no avail, although it didn't matter, outside there was probably just the postman or some salesman.

A redhead with blue eyes was at her door. Hermione shrieked a bit and covered her mouth with her hands; she blushed when she thought about how she looked there and then, still clad in her pyjamas and with her bushy hair looking like a nest.

Weasley smiled, half-fond and half-mocking, but soon his smile died on his deflated face. Even his hair seemed to have turned into this old straw's shade. Granger let him enter the house, gave him a cup of tea, caressed his big hands. Ronald hugged her tightly, his jacket smelled of wet skin.

"I missed you so much."

She felt his energetic arms around her tighten even more.

"How did you manage to come here?"

"I met someone who knew where to find a Portkey."

Granger sensed a black cloud over the conversation, in his sudden arrival, in his gloomy eyes.

"Is there something wrong, Ron?"

The man's hands loosened slowly, slipping from her back as if annihilated. And Hermione knew it.

"I did something really bad, Hermione."

She didn't let him go, she didn't want to see his expression, just to hide under his jacket and his shoulder and look through the window at the sunny rain.

"What?"

"When I read your letter, I was furious at you, I thought you had betrayed me."

He laughed, it sounded like a weary croak.

"What did you do?"

"I thought that letter was yours, completely, I didn't doubt it for a second. I was so stupid."

"I don't understand how anything that Snape might have said could've sounded like me."

The smell of wet soil blew in between the door's frame, coming from the garden. Ron was warm and wet, his hair dripped on Hermione's shoulder.

"Deep down, I always believed you'd leave me, that you'd see I was not enough."

Then she got away from him, annoyed and overwhelmed at the same time; Weasley's gaze didn't manage to calm her, his eyes seemed so small, a bit blind, half defeated. Colourless.

"Why are you saying those things?"

"Haven't you thought, even for a second, that Harry is better than me?"

"Ron!" she wanted to touch him, reach him, but the man's hands formed a barrier between them. "Things aren't like that."

"Just answer, not even once?"

The woman undid the knot between Ronald Weasley's hands and hers, raising her head as if asking for patience, or help.

"For Merlin, Ronald."

The man lowered his gaze, angry, unhappy, uneasy. On rare occasions one could see so many emotions in him, his gaze rarely turned into that shade of rancid violet.

"I'm not so sure we should… I need to think."

Hermione watched him, face eclipsed like a drawing, eyes big and dull, stained.

"I don't need to think about anything. What is it that we have to think about? What are you not sure about?" Her hands came back to his, like carnivore flowers, like hungry vagabonds, looking for him, yearning for the feeling of his red hair and freckled face. He barely received her, half crooked, without daring to push her away, not accept her completely. Granger was talking, her mouth opened and closed in a rush of words and words that smashed against Weasley's face.

"Maybe this won't work! We're always fighting!"

She didn't say anything, she just watched him, as if she wanted to hug him and hit him in just one movement. He was untying himself from her, disbanding. Hermione didn't know how to stop him.

"It was just a fake letter."

"It wasn't the letter, it's just…" his face was weary, almost blurry and dirty for the trip and all the raining. "I believed it, Hermione, don't you get it?"

Jean tugged one of her curls and her eyes lightened up, they started to drip on Ron's shoes. Big fingers touched the wet cheek, clumsily, as if lost.

"I need time."

"If we love each other there's nothing to think about."

"Yes, there is."

"No!" she took his hands away from her face; kind eyes were now reddened, darkened.

"You always think everything I say or do is wrong! Even now."

"They're just details, nonsense."

Something in him seemed to reopen, like an old tear. Like a trail, scratched too many times.

"Nonsense… that's what I mean! Do you think I'm a moron?"

"Merlin, Ron!"

"Do you think I'm exasperating?"

"This fight doesn't make any sense!"

She saw in his face they wouldn't be able to reach a pacific ending; they wouldn't be able to make peace, she knew him too well.

"You don't believe in me, Hermione," he told her while pointing at her with a finger, accusingly. "You think you're Ms Perfect and everyone else is just crazy."

"Nothing Snape wrote is true!"

"It is! It's so true even he realized it! Even the flying rodent knows you'll end up leaving me!"

Ronald was suddenly silent when he looked at Jean's teary, angry eyes.

"You are the one that doesn't trust me, Ron."

The aphonia was a dense atmosphere, a stubborn clot, anguished, stuck in the middle of the room. Ronald stood up, slowly, as if they hadn't fought at all, but his eyes were cloaked. Hermione didn't move, she stayed deep in her mutism.

Ron hesitated at the door, hand on the doorknob. Deep down he told himself that, hadn't he come back to the tent, if he had just waited a bit more, something would've grown between Harry and Hermione, something he could've never extinguished. And it hurt him, the mere idea hurt him, the mere possibility. To feel a stag's mark even in its absence.

If he wanted to be sure of Hermione, someday he had to be something more than what he currently was. He had to muster to courage to do so.

* * *

His times alone on his own were over; he lived stuck in the Ministry's offices or keeping watch in black bushes. He had decided to bury himself in his job, and so he did. He was pushing Granger to a corner, to a humid, trembling attic in his brain, where he felt her when he drank coffee, where he looked at the corner of his eye for a moment and saw her bushy hair, when he faced the blue vase painting that she had liked.

As weeks passed, he started to understand that, deep down, that job suited him well; his work consisted of bullying rookies, yelling at them, forcing them to be stronger. To be hard and inflexible. With Voldemort and his father, he'd learned military behaviours and strategies which he used constantly. He was good at it. Some criticized him for his unorthodox methods, but no one dared to questions his effectiveness. The small squad he had under his command had already caught dozens of former Death Eaters and potentially dangerous individuals, and Snape was slowly sneaking in the Ministry's powerful spheres. They asked him for his advice, they took him into account; he had waited for so long for his peer's acknowledgement and he was barely starting to savour it.

He told himself he could live like that, that he could put his entire being on hunting those who were once his mates. Could there exist anything better than that for him? He had always lived in uncertainties, between smoke and metallic odours, between stones and dim lights and battling soldiers. He knew how to live like that, he could do it.

Even without Granger and without Lily. He wouldn't be happy, he had already accepted that, but he was willing to stick to the cause he'd followed since his youth: to cut the snake, to burn it to its deepest roots. The snake that had taken Lily away from him.

* * *

Her parents were following her, talking to her about anything that crossed their minds. They had listened to the fight from their room; they sometimes focused on her wet eyes, on her red face. She'd have preferred to be left alone.

With Ron, she'd always had mercurial mood: suddenly she adored him, suddenly she was furious. She knew that in him, in his centre or his borders or somewhere in his being, there was a part of herself, a part she lacked.

But if Ron was so scared, if Ron thought he was being betrayed every single time, then what could she do to delete his eternal mistrust? Maybe he was right, and they couldn't work. If they got close they'd hurt each other, like hedgehogs.

She loved Ron, but he was incomplete, something didn't let him reach her. Maybe it was her fault, maybe she'd been too petulant, maybe she was too insecure deep down, just like Ronald.

Hermione would've wanted things to be easier, for loving each other to be like entering a stream together, in a loving tide that would continue its path. For it to be so simple as to just love each other, despite themselves and their mistakes and their deficiencies and their imperfect humanity. But love wasn't such a simple equation, it wasn't anything like order or logic; it was a mix of stardust and lunars and hair and sweet saliva. A senseless scramble.

But no. Ron had crossed her threshold like a sudden comet that may not come back on time, that may never be ready to come back.

* * *

Alone, accompanied by her lamp's yellow light, she looked at the eyes on the picture. The man was showing his palm and reading an oath. His face seemed like a plastic mask, as if it had been made of cold wax. Next to the snippet, an unopened letter waited for her since weeks ago. She opened it, angry at herself and the grieving man of the picture.

_Hermione Jean Granger:_

She recognized the small, tight handwriting, like a woman's. And, for a moment, she hated the hand that had written it. The pictured man was still taking his oath.

_I should not have done what I did. You ask me what did you do to deserve it: you didn't. I am sorry._

_SS_

Fury bubbled like hot lava in her stomach, but conciliatory relief also overtook her at the same time. Snape never asked for forgiveness, never, except to her, and Lily. And Hermione wondered for a moment what was she to the widowed professor? What was she, and what had she meant for him? After every action from the Potion Master, she was a bit farther away from understanding him. He seemed to give her his friendship, he betrayed her, he came back. Harry told her it was obvious he needed her. She looked at him again, taking an oath, with his hand exposed. Snape was capable of vile actions, but he also carried incorruptible love.

Snape, the natural disaster, the overwhelming storm. She imagined Harry's mum in the eye of the storm, in the wind's core. That was how Snape loved.

* * *

Snape, Snape, Snape.

The name stuck on her tongue like a lazy, wet snap.

Snape, Severus Snape, flying rodent (as Ron had called him), greasy bat locked in the dungeons like the bitter hermit he was, like a chained dog in a half-abandoned porch. Snape and his long eyes, small and black as coal, or dirty water, or ashes. Snape and his strands of greasy hair and his gait of soldier-aristocrat that had disconcerted her since she was a child. The grieving man that was a chimaera between fragile, languid laces and oily smells of mills and poverty.

The miserable bastard who had in his chest the shining, unimagined gift of going around trying to kill himself for love, exhaling love, that dense substance, on every pore of his being, making everyone miserable around him because they were too cowardly or too sensible to imitate him and go around life dying of romanticism.

And then Hermione got angry, wondering why Ron didn't have some of that beautiful, insane outburst Snape had and dared to loved her once and for all, just as she wanted to be loved.

* * *

She found warmth in the fabric's sheets, right in the middle, waiting deep down an incandescent, sweet centre. It smelled like young wood, like syrup. Everything was so warm, like the Earth's core.

She removed her feet from the floor and spun around slowly, waving the air around her; she heard herself laugh, laughing like she never did in front of others, like she never thought she could laugh. She saw black fabrics spinning around her, around her axis. She felt alone because the dream was starting to fade away, and even if she could smell him, he wasn't there, not that man whose face she never saw. She knew who he was and that made it even worse.

And she smiled at him in her dreamy fantasies, with this kind of smile that had never belonged to her. She asked him if he loved her. Everything was so stupid. She guessed it was some kind of annoying alliance between her and Snape, with lukewarm spins and laughter and stairs.

The furious urge to see him, just to slap him in the face, mixed irrevocably with the urge to hug him and squeeze all the words and tears out of him and kiss his hands like the saint he wasn't. To create a speech with all the nice, kind and beautiful words anyone had invented and throw it to him like petals, just in front of his blank, pale face.

* * *

_Everything is his fault, Harry, this, Ron leaving, it's his fault. Should I forgive him? And what if I don't? Will he spend the rest of his life blaming himself for what he did, just like it happened with your mum?_

_I don't want to be a regret for him. It's like someone had cut me in half, one part which hates him and that thinks I shouldn't talk to him again, and a part which forgives him and wishes him every ounce of happiness he can feel. Both of them live together and both are the same._

_Harry, and I realise with horror, Harry, that I really like him, that I miss him too and that I'd like to hug him and tell him I'm so sorry. That I'm sorry your mum is dead and for being put upside down and tortured and thrown in Azkaban, and that I'm sorry he had burnt my letters and my chance to be his friend._

_But I don't want Ron to hate me._

_But I don't want Snape to mock me anymore._

* * *

Ron's letters arrived with prudent frequency; they talked a lot about Quidditch's fields and Ginny and Harry's relationship, but avoided tenaciously mentioning their fight, as if Weasley was afraid of brushing it, reaching her, as if he was escaping true contact. There wasn't in the paragraphs a trace of the loving stream that once existed there. The letter's poverty was for Hermione a constant reminder that things had morphed into something new, incomprehensible and cold. She broke a little, like a very fragile glass, with every loving word Ron didn't write.

Australia's sunny rains jumped out of her window like shiny dust, but she wasn't happy. She didn't read books because she got stuck on one page, without understanding anything, and she read the same sentence over and over again. Blue eyes appeared between the words and made her want to cry. She watched telly with her mum, they went shopping, cleaned the house, played with Crookshanks.

Somehow, he was everywhere, he was drawn in the surface of her eyes. In front of her parents, she tightened her lips and concealed her suddenly wet gaze and everything was useless because they too pretended they didn't notice and started to talk about the neighbours and the new equipment for the clinic with fake emotion.

* * *

Snape yelled on the rain's edge where he seemed to avoid getting wet; he was ordering fifty push-ups right there, with his harsh face. The rookies looked at each other; it was always the same with him, mud, scratches, scrapes, bloody knuckles. He seemed to enjoy making them suffer, his blurry smile was proof enough. Potter was the first one to yield and face the mud's storm and push-ups and stiff muscles. Potter always obeyed without grimacing. The rest followed their vilified saviours and threw themselves to the ground with water smacking them on the back. Snape and his black cloak got wet until he looked like a dripping crow, a bunch of fabric, a rag's corner. His unhappy smile disappeared slowly, as if bleached by the rain.

Harry could say that after a good soak, the Potioneer seemed washed out, with his face limp and fallen. He looked at them distantly, as if they were a bad painting. He had trouble leaving him behind at nights, to say goodbye as Snape stood behind his rigid desk, with his blank face of perfect apathy, of absolute lack of faith.

Since a while ago, Harry found her mother more in Snape's eyes than in his own. The black pupils were two armours, two stony cores that held her. Severus represented to him a piece of Lily, as if he had been her shadow and had ended up confused and grey and incomplete without her.

Once, to put some life in that dark gaze, he told Snape that Hermione had confessed in one of her letters that she missed him. Prince looked at him, mistrustful, suddenly too attentive, and Harry started to fear that the moor's name inside Snape wasn't Lily, that the absence leaving him dry wasn't caused by his mum.

* * *

To keep living, because even if it pained him, he was hanging with nails and teeth to a small particle of hope. A naïve, innocent, unreal particle of himself. Unreal and bitter because life wasn't good and he wasn't good either.

He dragged himself to work and back home and work again. He thought a lot about useless things that he quickly forgot about afterwards. Once someone had told him the story of a cursed man that had to push a giant rock uphill to let it fall at dusk and start all over again at dawn, every day of his life. Sometimes he felt like that man. To wake up every day to repeat the same mistakes and horrors he had made since he was young. His life had passed too quickly and to him, it seemed irrevocably fucked up.

He worked hard to quiet down his inner monologues, to ease his pain, the sudden punch of going home at night and to find it dark and alone and to tell himself at the door's threshold that he had messed up every opportunity, every possible escape.

Sometimes he woke up half-drunk and wrote letters to Granger he destroyed once he was sober again. But there was one he sent. It didn't carry his name so she wouldn't rip it apart before having read it.

In a nutshell, that was it. To keep living, because dying was for the cowards and weak, the only thing he hadn't been, or at least not completely.

To keep living with Granger and Lily stuck in him like a permanent, unique illness. The frustration that nothing had been what it could've been.

* * *

To cry and wash her face and cry again, in front of the mirror. That morning had arrived a letter from Ron, the final one. Lavender's name peeked several times, surprisingly, obnoxiously, violently. 'Confused', 'furious', 'desperate'. The words which Ron hid behind meant nothing to her, that she loved him and hated him with every piece of parchment she discovered. Weasley said he wasn't enough, not yet, not for someone like her.

How many times had she hurt him? How many times had she called him an idiot without realizing it? She didn't know. Ron was weak and shivering and angry in front of her. He told her that loving her was breaking him a little, that it was making him small and withered and happy and completely overwhelmed. A bunch of things that excited him and made him unhappy at the same time. Deep down, Ron was still the youngest son, the shy boy with used clothes and second-hand cauldrons. The insignificant redhead eclipsed by Harry Potter's big shadow.

That hurt Hermione, it hurt not being enough to ease his insecurities. Maybe Ron was right, maybe he should grow up and then look for her when all those hurting words were gone, when he became what he wanted to be and that ghost of uncertainty didn't exist between them, which would always push Weasley to self-doubt and suspicious resentment.

She loved Ron, confused or certain or lacking, she loved his fire hair and his eyelashes, but sometimes even love isn't enough to stay together and she knew it and feared it.

Ron had to find himself first before finding her, to then find each other: alone and whole and ready.

_Someday, my dear Ron._

That was all she could write before the water in her eyes prevented her from seeing, before she bent by half and cried brokenly and silently in front of the letter.

* * *

In the beginning, he met her and he closed his fist angrily because those eyes didn't gaze like Hermione's, because her hair was irritatingly straight and her smile was mawkish and dumb. At the beginning he called himself stupid, mumbling it. Stupid, stupid, stupid, and Lavender put some powder on her face, so stupid, and Lavender leant on his shoulder. Everything was unbearable because she'd never be Hermione Jean.

Hermione, who had rejected him, just as he always thought she would.

Brown kissed him once, with her too sweet, too wet lips, and he wanted to push her apart as if she was an insistent mosquito, to push her against the wall to see her face just before wailing and to see how she went round the corner, crying, infatuated just like a small girl.

When he moved her away, she started to cry and her fringes of a perfect doll dripped and she wasn't the same as before. Greyback had left her a nasty scar and she always carried pullovers to hide it. She had lost her ability to whimper like a child, now she cried in silence with blue eyes wide open, full of helpless pleas and a vague, dazed love. Ron wanted to vomit for having pushed her, for having accepted to date her.

Half driven by pity, half driven by ire, he kept on seeing her. Hermione faded away from Lavender and he stopped feeling her absence in everything, in every other woman.

Small details made him feel contempt; sometimes she was so dumb compared to Hermione, so vain, and yet she looked at him with blatant adoration, as if he was much bigger than he really was, as if she wanted to kiss his hands and hair. Something moved inside him, a small spark of yearning and reject. Granger would never think of him as amazing, would never admire him; he got angry when thought about it and he kissed the blonde, regretting it as soon as their lips met.

_You don't deserve Hermione_, the voice that had chased him for a long time told him, since he had grown up. _You are nobody_. Then he ran away from Lavender, who seemed sad and confused and everything was disgusting for Ron out of the sudden: to be there with a woman without loving her, hurting her with impunity. Then he felt pity for her, for her and her scar and her unfavourable idiocy. He hugged her again and asked for forgiveness and hated himself more.

Once Hermione had told him he had the emotional capacity of a rock, maybe she had ended up rubbing some of her drama off on him.

Bloody Hermione, beautiful Hermione who had dumped him.

Ginny arrived one day with the news that everything was a lie, the silences and waiting and her reject.

But it wasn't a lie for him, who smelt like Brown and her mawkish perfume and his mouth tasted of her and guilt.

It wasn't a lie, it had been too real, him crying in the alley or alone in the empty Quidditch fields, and his anger and his kicks to a litter bin in the middle of the street.

He had believed it completely, that was the truth. He had always thought she'd leave him and she did, even if she hadn't done it; a part of her truly abandoned him.

* * *

When she was younger, she worked hard to teach herself every topic; even muggle psychology books had found a space in her bookshelf. Depression, that's how they called the stage before acceptance, a stage full of mucus and crying at the middle of the night and swollen faces. She was right there.

Even though she understood Ron's motives, she couldn't avoid feeling furious streams of reproach. She couldn't avoid believing that, even with all those reasons, they could still be together. To love him should've been enough.

What had been Ron for her? A red planet in the starry, infinite night, a restless sun in the cosmic, soft dim light. Ron was like Australia's sunny rain, like bright drips and rainbows against a dull sky. Ron, the first love that you never really forget. Ron, the axis, a boyish smirk.

Hermione knew of the hard path she had ahead, of spontaneous tears, of past's remembrance which would leave her confined against the windows and the pictures.

Someday, Ron would come back, just as she had told him in the letter. He had to, because she loved him and that was all they needed. He just needed to pick up the love that had always belonged to him.


	28. The City of Witches

**Disclaimer**: Gato Azul owns the plot and Rowling everything else.

**N.T.:** The reunion is so close!

* * *

**28: The City of Witches**

He's there, right in front of you, and he has changed in so many ways you barely recognized him. He is the same scrawny kid you put the hat on, do you still remember it? Yeah, you do, you're still looking at his pale face and that slightly scared glint you no longer find in the blackness of his adulthood, in his years of life, that had turned him into that thing you have in front of you.

And you know you have to say it, you already feel half-drunk and there won't be another moment; you're a Gryffindor, you are the Head of Gryffindor! Minerva, sit up straight and raise your head and stop hiding your eyes with your hat. You were indeed horribly mistaken, but it's also true that you've paid for it, the bags under your eyes attest to it. Enough, Minerva, the clock continues ticking, speak now, he's waiting for you, one can notice in his delicately extended silence, in the way he takes his cup to his lips and looks at you from the corner of his eye. It's the same kid, Minerva, under everything, under time and his blank face and his wrinkles. It's the same kid that told you his name in the middle of a hallway when you picked him up because somebody had beaten him up. He told you the name you never forgot after hearing it and which you thought ugly and uncommon, the name you have whispered in your agony and your guilt.

Say it, Minerva, he's waiting.

You speak. Your voice, always firm, sounds odd and hesitant to you. He looks at you and you shiver, you're cold, a frozen hand extends on your naked back. Do you remember what you said, that day in the hallway twenty-seven years ago? Twenty-seven, Merlin, time flies. You want to remember it and repeat it to go back to that moment where you were the teacher, the adult, the authority, and you could cheer him up and talk without him looking at you like he's doing now. To go back to that kind of fraternal bubble where you could put your hand on his shoulder and say anything.

How has the world changed, Minerva; you're turning old and that bothers you a bit.

He stays silent and takes a sip of his cup. He's not watching you anymore, that relieves and asphyxiates you at the same time.

What you can do is remember every single word you threw at him in the Great Hall, and you have in your memory each of his expressions as you attacked him. Your hands went numb and you want to erase forever that instant where his eyebrows scrunched upwards, as if begging, and you lashed out again and his arm hesitated before pointing at you.

If you had known…

But you didn't, and there he is in front of you, and he is quiet and not begging anymore and he doesn't care about you anymore.

"Severus, I need your forgiveness more than I need any honour."

And you remove your badge, you don't want it, Merlin's Order is worthless if he doesn't come back to you, if he doesn't become your pupil again. You failed, and no honour on your robes will soften your mistake.

"I need you to forgive me, to talk to me like you did before."

He raises his head, and again his eyes are like a rope tightening around your neck, his eyes so slow and so dark. Is there nothing else in him for you?

He's still silent, and his eyes trace your face and your pupils and you think you've suddenly shrunk and he has grown more than he should and he is, deep down, older than you.

"I beg you to forgive me."

And that's the moment. You, Minerva, kneel, just like that; your old bones complain, but it doesn't matter. You catch his hand, it's cold and callous. Suddenly he seems like that child again and he shows fear, just like before. He's your child in the hallway, your kid with an odd name, your apprentice. And you know at that moment he's going to forgive you, that he has already done it. He sits back on his chair and fights because he doesn't know if he should kneel or run away from you.

"Forgive me, Severus."

And you watch again that strange plea of his eyebrows that rise, shaken.

"You don't have to do this, Minerva. Stand up."

How deep is his voice, but it doesn't scare you. His hand goes to a pocket of his black coat.

"I don't have anything to forgive you for, you did what you must."

"I should have known; I should have felt it."

You made a mistake because his expression darkens and his face asks, _you never felt it?_

"I refused, I refused to believe it, but in the end, I could not find any other explanation."

You fingers brush his arm, slightly, barely there. You don't put your hand on his shoulder, you can't do it anymore. Again his gaze raises to meet yours, and for a second it's like a day hasn't passed since you pulled his robes to help him stand up when those Gryffindor kids were leaving and you saw his nose was too big and you were outraged by that bruise on his cheek. But this time you were the one that hurt him and you can't stand that truth.

"I am sorry it turned out this way, I am sorry for every insult I yelled at you, believe me, I am so sorry."

He lowers his lids; he's as pale as that first time you saw him under the Great Hall's candles.

"I know, Minerva." He doesn't open his eyes, but his rough hand travels to yours and he takes it. His thumb brushes for a second over it in a fleeting, small caress. He purses his lips and seems annoyed for a moment, but then his hand kindly slides a bit more inside yours, and then he lets go.

You know there will be a gap between you and him, like an invisible abyss. That instant of hesitation. You know they'll try to cover it with small talk and Sunday meetings. Will it work, Minerva? You don't know.

* * *

_Forgive me._

That was all the letter said, a whole page and just two words in the centre.

Tell me what is this.

Tell me, why.

Why?

Your picture is still in my drawer, it's a small wound. You keep moving around in the world as if nothing had happened and everything is alright for you. And me? Do you know what you did to me? Do I deserve this?

You say I don't. You say you're sorry. I want to believe that deep down you don't hate me, that what you did wasn't out of hate. I want to know that it hurts you, I want to know that you're feeling the same pressure in the chest, the same gap opening inside you.

I need to forgive you or hate you. Here I'm torn, you know? It's hard being like this.

I know I have to see you because you have to hear me, but I'm afraid to meet your cold face, your undying indifference, and to realize everything is in vain and that you never actually cared for me. Did you think that, if you made me unhappy, you would get better?

I don't get it, I simply don't get it.

Professor Snape, if I see you and I tell you that there were moments where I loved your long eyes, where I loved your hands moving in the air, would things change? Would my good intentions made you regret it? Or am I just too annoying for you?

You always told me I'm conceited and a know-it-all. Even if I care for you, won't you ever stop despising me?

I need you to hear me; it's hard to hate you, deep down I don't want to.

Is everything futile, Professor Snape?

You hurt me and I can't completely erase our days together, I can't erase what I saw about you in your trial's session. But it's all useless because you'll take my esteem and you will crush it with your beautiful hands and squeeze it like a worthless rag.

Tell me you won't do it, tell me you won't betray me again, that you won't tear my desire of caring for you in pieces.

I'm weak, because I'm still afraid of being hurt, because you can still hurt me. And you do it, with your small letters.

* * *

He's there, in your classrooms, in the castle under your influence and Albus' and every former headmaster. He walks between the lines, you could almost swear he's a ghost, that a day hasn't gone by since the three of you were together, Albus, him and you. He raises his eyes, looking at you for a few seconds, and you think that everything is where it should be, that it is good to have him back again, even for a few hours. The students lower their heads when he gets close to them, they seem to fear him even more than before. How many generations have passed in your hands and his?

The test ends and Severus says goodbye. It's good that he sometimes lends you a bit of his time, you and his old home. He asks for your permission to go to the dungeons for a moment; you follow him down the spiral staircases; his hands caress the rail and his touch seems to know every centimetre of the way. His office is intact but dusty, it looks like a phantom city. He wanders his black eyes with a melancholic, severe air. You think about all those times when he found himself alone inside this cave, you think that he might have cried, you think that he cursed them all, you think that he wanted to run away, and yet he never did.

Of course, he had to come back to Hogwarts, even if just to visit. Hogwarts is his world, his home, his life's scenery, his creator. In this castle he grew up, loved, found a safe place. Of course he had to come back.

"Everything is just like you left it; you'll always be able to come back here, Severus."

He shakes his head slowly, without looking at you.

"That'd be moving backwards. I can't go back."

* * *

David Granger looked at his daughter, who was holding a bunch of letters as if they were the most precious things she'd ever held in her hands, and he wondered why did Hermione had to change so much, why was she so far away from them and so close to others, those wizards. Just one line and they managed to make her travel an entire continent, while they were almost eradicated from her life.

"What's so urgent, Hermione?"

He watched her swallow and buckle her belt, eyes hesitant and weak. He asked again, raising his voice with noticeable anger.

"I need to talk to someone. Besides, I have to go back to Hogwarts to finish the school year; it's the last one, then I can look for a job."

"I don't trust those people, Hermione. They almost erased your family, I wish you never had to see them again."

"It's not their fault."

"Then whose?" David lashed out, suddenly furious.

"Mine."

The girl was supporting her head against the plane's window, wishing to be somewhere else.

"Who do you need to talk to?"

"With Ron, and an old teacher."

"Albus Dumbledore? God, even their names are weird," he shifted his coat brusquely, snorting.

"Albus Dumbledore died. I'm going to see my Potion professor," she whispered so no one else could hear them. That irritated her father even more.

"Why?"

"We have unfinished business."

"Wasn't he the bloke that humiliated you in classes, or was that Slughorn?"

The flight attendant stood in front of the seats, her perfume flooded everything around her frame. A passenger in another row was trying to fasten his belt, shivering, close to a panic attack; soon the rest of the flight attendants formed a circle of mixed perfumes.

"The first one, professor Snape."

"Snape," mumbled David, as if someone had stuck a sour orange in his mouth. "That tosser; it's unethical and unprofessional to bully students, even worse if they're kids."

Hermione nodded in silence. Mr Granger had crossed his arms and was caressing his unshaven chin as he glanced at her.

"Don't avoid me, Hermione. You know that I love you, it's just that, everything that has happened with you, what you have done…" he watched her shrink on her seat and grimace; he wanted to yell at her and hug her so no one could take her away from them again, but deep down he sensed that she was already beyond them, that nothing would be like it was before. They were magic-less people, second-class. "What is it that you have to talk to him about?"

"Academic business, dad."

"Right, you and your academic business. You're always holding everything, you don't trust us, and it's because of them."

His daughter's eyes met his, they were shiny and dark, stuck between reproach and guilt. David shifted in his seat and lowered his lids, trying to pretend he was asleep, but he felt her whimper next to him, touching his hand.

"I tried to protect you, why don't you get it?"

He opened his eyes and found her bent over him, holding his fingers tightly and soaking them with her tears. He hugged her, feeling like a dickhead; he hugged her tight and her bushy hair got stuck in his nose. He put his mouth close to her ear to whisper. A man in jeans watched them from afar, curious and invasive; Granger hid his face in his daughter's hair, half annoyed and half embarrassed.

"And you have to understand I'd rather face any danger than to forget you, Hermione."

The girl felt David's arms crush her against his chest, his shaky voice moistened her ear.

"Don't ever do something like that to us again; we have the right to choose, you can't violate that right."

Then he let her go slowly and they stayed together in a lazy, conciliatory hug. They slept almost the whole flight; Hermione looked through the window, David read a new orthodontics book, they talked a bit about anything that came to their minds. They got a bit closer during those hours, mending a part of the hole that stood between them.

* * *

Their old house in London seemed to be waiting for them. Hermione sat on the floor that had been her room since she was little, unfolding her clothes. Some fear still clung to her; to go back to Hogwarts was necessary, but it was something she feared.

Snape's letter was in her hands and whispered: _I'm sorry._

It was hard to decide what she felt when she heard him apologize, it wasn't normal, it seemed almost incredible.

Downstairs David was doing some ruckus with the cooking pans. He had insisted in accompanying her; she didn't know how far he could go in the magic community, but she assumed he could at least come with her to Hogsmeade. Both would live together for a while and then her mother would catch up with them when she sold the whole office's equipment they had in Australia.

And she wondered what she would say when she had her professor in front of her, what would his indifferent, disdainful face tell her. When she thought about him, she felt fear and anger and a strange ache.

* * *

She had clung to David's arm, watching him raise his head curiously, surprised, as if searching the air. Those pointy hats were trending, and even if she found them quite normal, they left her father in a mixture of confusion, amazement and good humour, because he found them ridiculous.

The dentist peeked through every window shop like a child, watching the cauldrons carefully, the potions, the strange frog sweets that jumped in their packages.

He walked with her for hours, drinking butterbeer. David seemed enthusiastic, wandering from one street to the other, almost running; his case hit his back by the movement of his sudden walks. He seemed to be trying to be reconciled with that world, the one he'd said so many times he felt resentful towards, for having taken her away. Suddenly he stopped under a street lamp, almost breathless.

"I understand why you love this place so much, Hermione."

He turned around, a yellowish light illuminating his face.

"If I'd been you, I'd have never wanted to go back."

Jean took his hand and they walked back together to muggle London; the next day she had to go back to school.


	29. Blue Flowers

**Disclaimer**: All rights to Rowling and Gato Azul.

**Important Note:** I'm not the author of this story, _Gato Azul_ is. I'm just the translator with the consent of the author who has no bearing on the plot or writing.

The author sometimes uses 'Jean' to address Hermione, as it is her second name, just for you to remember.

* * *

**29\. Blue Flowers**

Her father walked around the kitchen, looking for honey to put on his toast. She reread her old package of letters; Snape's was in a white envelope, lacking any other detail. She opened it again, already knowing it's content. Right in the middle of the paper, almost like a voice, or a firefly in the middle of nothing.

_Forgive me._

_SS_

And it felt as if someone had punched her or hung her upside down. Suddenly, an unconscious knowledge appeared in her, like a bullet or a lighting bolt. Hermione's understanding shifted in a few moments and suddenly everything was so clear, so evident.

Snape didn't ask for forgiveness (he wouldn't if he didn't care). There was only one person he had loved enough to do it.

A star flew over her; suddenly, in her hands, she was carrying a transparent, heavy sphere, a certainty made of lead she hadn't had before. She wondered how she couldn't have realized it, how she could've been so blind and so clumsy. Ron's burned letters, her urges to find a motive for the Potioneer. There was the explanation. Her father was looking at her, quiet and confused.

"Is something wrong, Jean?"

She met his gaze, eyes swollen and big.

"What's wrong?"

"I need to find my professor."

That was her primitive, reckless answer. Hermione had an overwhelming inquire, a gigantic question that occupied her whole mouth and which she had to satiate.

The letter's content plagued her mind, the powerful inky handwriting, the silence of every other unwritten phrase around that small message. She thought, looking in her mind at Snape's every expression, a compendium of his multiple pale faces, of his tones when speaking, of their conversations: was there another clue, a revealing spark she hadn't understood before?

* * *

Hermione thought about her fleeting meeting with Harry and Ginny, she thought about that shade of red, that space between the eyes so similar between siblings; she thought about him, about Ron and his absences, about his absence's atmosphere that crept upon stealth silences and Potter's clairvoyant eyes.

Ron appeared everywhere, like scarlet mist.

There in Hogwarts, his memory turned into a bolt, crossing her head from her crown straight to her feet.

She thought about Minerva too, of the pointy shoulder pads of her dress, about her cowardly, restless way as she stopped asking her about Snape. The last time she'd seen her, she said she didn't want to know anything about him; to find herself suddenly retreating wasn't agreeable to her, and she didn't want McGonagall to see the confusion that appeared whenever he was involved.

Hogwarts, the same stone titan, the cold, changing beast. It was completely rebuilt, no scars on its colossal walls. Children came and went between the brush of cloaks, between the smell parchment and dungeons. Far away, Filch sweep and growled. She smiled without knowing why; to watch him proved to her that a part of her memories would stay intact, they would last.

She walked to the end of the hallway and stopped in front of the pointed doors. Everything was so familiar, and yet she sensed a gap, some kind of diluted sadness, amnesic anguish.

Remus, Sirius, Fred. All those names of the abyss, of the gap that stood between her and peace. She needed them, she felt them as if she could find them behind one of the classroom's doors, as if they'd been there all those months and no one had died.

A voice of her past created a déjà vu in her mind. For a brief moment, she could've almost sworn nothing had happened; that war and all those deaths and Horrocruxes were just a thought in her mind weaved in milliseconds, and that had absorbed her; war was just a minute, barely a tiny fraction of time. The long thing, the fixed, the immutable was the sound of that voice beyond the cracks of time and her memory and the castle.

The voice of her childhood passing.

Severus Snape's voice travelled through the wizards' castle, like a green sprit, like a smell of dungeon and war-like metals.

She peeked through the half-opened door and saw her past revive in front of her. The Potion professor, walking between lines with his black clothes, with his eternally dirty hair and his waxy, pale face, with his air of a wet crow.

In her, anger, sadness and love boiled together like a throbbing, reactive mass, like a big, strangled heart, and she knew at that moment, with stunning quickness, that her urges of punching him were as strong as her urges to take his hand and slap him and cover him with kisses and pull his greasy hair and wash his face with her tears.

How could his baritone voice raise old times from the dead? How could he manage to give her back her childhood's memories?

The shadow man walked a bit more and stopped to whisper something to a Hufflepuff student. She knew that, if he turned to look at her, she wouldn't bear the eclipse of his dark eyes on hers, she knew she'd turn into ashes.

She was crying for him, for Ron, for all those years before the war, for Lily Potter and her undying eyes.

She would remember him in her childhood's memories just like that moment, between the desks, and she thought about all the man must've endured and which she didn't even suspect. The vision of human beings was so limited, they could see just one small part, see just the bud of a sprout, and ignore all those roots underneath the earth.

* * *

Thomas Young lowered his eyes stealthy; the idiot was hiding something in his left hand. Apparently, Minerva hadn't warned them, hadn't told them who would be the professor watching them; maybe Young was too confident, like every brat of his age. He walked to the imprudent kid from behind and whispered. "Do you think I am a fool, Mr Young? Put that away or you'll see all your House's point vanish in an instant, just like your already small chances of passing this test."

He raised his eyes, just like in every other moment in his life, expecting to find nothing else than the hallway and the bowed heads and the blank tests of his still-hated Gryffindors. But there she was, as if standing in front of a window of a parallel universe, the entrance of a tunnel of himself.

Her bushy hair still unkempt, small feet and shy freckles. She reminded him so much of Lily, but she also separated him from her so certainly, in just that moment. She'd come back like those green eyes hadn't done; she was standing in the threshold waiting for him like Lily, his dear Lily, hadn't done. What amount of small moments had guided him to that drain, to that small storm of crazy sorrow and longing for her? To that tight, naked stare of his loneliness and Hermione Jean.

He opened his mouth, the children weren't looking at them, the children he'd taught never looked at him; he could be half-broken inside, he could improvise strength, almost faked, and they never saw. They didn't see him there, almost fallen, fulminated by her.

He walked to the static frame, to the axis and the origin and the threshold, throwing in his path the rest of his silent armour and his pride at the feet of the distracted children.

She looked at him with fear, with angry tears, with a piece of something shiny he couldn't recognize. But she was there, even if just to reproach him or yell or punch, she was there. Lily had thought him so incurable, she hadn't tried to hurt him, but Granger the know-it-all apparently still had hope, faith that he wasn't completely lost.

And he had to give her that.

Granger had faith and a desire to believe that, deep down, not everything was lost.

She was there like a gap, a tearing in his life. He didn't know what to say to her angry aphonia, to her swollen eyes of rage and tears, and to her hand that raised aggressively against him, to smack him again on the cheek, but the contact never came, and when he looked again to see what had stopped her, Granger had lowered her hand and she was still crying and scraping the black rust of his eyes with hers.

* * *

And his light lids close before your hand's threat.

Hermione, you know how to face his ire, his yells, his acerbic glares, but his docility, his defeat, his weakness, you don't know how to face that.

You can't raise your hand against him, you can't and you lose your urges to hit him and your arm falls. He waits with his eyes still closed and he's so pale… you know he regrets it, and that certainty is so strange and painful to you and it shakes you in so many ways.

You don't know how to face his affection, which is the last thing you expected to get from him. You have him in your hands and it scratches your ribs and it's like a flame that burns and dies in small explosions and which you know you won't be able to hold.

Then he looks at you and disintegrates the small leftovers of your anger with his open and naked and transparent eyes. For the first time, you manage to see through them, they're water holes, slits in old, wet soil; they're so alive and there's something deep down you see moving and shivering, something too fragile and too aged.

Snape is a dreadful chimaera of hate and love, a disproportionate encounter of hardships and tenderness.

Still hating the cruel face he'd already shown you, you envelop his neck with your arms. He's selfish, ruthless, and you don't have enough strength to hate him, to banish his voice in the middle of your memories from your life. The easiest and least painful is to forgive him. At least you hope you're not wrong in this.

He's rigid and he receive you with surprise, retreating some steps. With a shiver of horror and sweetness, you feel his hand climbing to your shoulder. Some kids inside the classroom imitate kissing noises and whistle.

He pulls apart; the divorce from his warmth and yours gives you a sip of abandonment that horrifies you. You hear him yell as if he was many blocks away from you, from you and that something that's boiling in your core and that's related to him and his gigantic nose that weirdly and wrongly is starting to match your sense of beauty.

He's screaming at the children, threatening and turning stiff, grey. He grabs one of them by the ear and puts him in front so he can answer his test against the board. Then he looks at you and you have the feeling he'll call you a big mouth and will take points away from you and say something offensive about your teeth, but his way of watching you this time makes you understand that those things are from a past that's almost disappearing from you. That the man you knew never existed in itself, that this is the one you are barely starting to see.

* * *

Against all odds, Hermione waited for him in the hallway; he found her already reading a book. She averted her eyes from the black words to look at her professor.

"What are you doing here?" the girl asked, closing her encyclopaedia.

"Minerva asked me to watch over this group. I'm not a professor, nor I plan to be one again."

Hermione watched him again, surprised; there were things in him that seemed to have melted in the war.

Granger seemed moved by resentment and some indecisive search that didn't take her to any decisive action, she didn't leave but didn't talk to him either. She stayed up against the wall, closed book in her hands.

"Did you get my letter?"

"Yes," she answered bluntly, fixing her skirt as if wanting to pretend she wasn't talking with him.

"Well?"

"I don't know what to say." Her eyes were still protected with distance, with a coldness that didn't suit her, and which Snape was hating so far.

"I thought you always know what to say."

Hermione startled and looked at him for the first time during those tense, sharp moments.

"And if I say yes, that I forgive you, what would happen?"

Snape didn't say anything; he seemed angry and impatient, as if he wanted to yell and was holding back. They were in the middle of the hallway without looking at each other, barely close, but evasive and uncomfortable; the hug from a few minutes before seemed impossible to imagine, illogic.

"Where are you going?"

"Home, with my dad."

"You left your cassettes in my house; you may want to come back for them."

* * *

She recognized him in the dim light, his walking figure in that rancid atmosphere of the house arrest that wasn't anymore. What was she doing there? She still didn't understand it and she watched herself on that depressing couch where she'd sat to read so many times. The absent man appeared with a carton box full of cassettes and put it on her lap. He looked down at her and his eyes seemed to wait and ask and desire. What was happening? She didn't understand that either. She stood up slowly, holding the package of music and looking around. Maybe it was time to go, but she couldn't decide to do it. There was something in him so unknown and so vulnerable in that moment, she didn't dare to abandon him. It was like a bad omen.

"Come here, Granger."

But Hermione didn't follow him to the end of the hallway; she waited in the threshold, watching him moving in the dark. She saw him pick up the painting of blue flowers she liked, walked with it as lights slid on his face, and put on her hands the painting's weight and on her eyes his gaze's weight, which Hermione still couldn't decipher or name, trying to express it in words at that moment. Two perfect black circles, two gaps to empty space, to the night sky. Blind windows where one could peek but do no more than sense something behind, just sense.

"Take it."

Granger had the feeling he was gifting her something much more than a painting. Something much heavier and more precious and personal. She didn't know what.

* * *

Her round face raises towards yours from the bush that is her hair. You wish you could tell her you don't want her to leave, but no. She looks at the clock and you find out it's time to walk her to the door and let her leave and watch her cross the street with her box and her painting and her grandma's skirt. And you have to see that you're unprotected in the middle of her absence's rain; that you can't defend yourself anymore.

If you were any other man different, if you were younger, more naïve, you'd ask her to stay.

She shrugs, resigned to leave, and something primitive makes you speak, something that doesn't accept another night of insomnia thinking about what you could've done and as always didn't.

"Will you forgive me, Granger?"

* * *

He asked you aggressively, almost ordering you, as if you had forgotten to hand him an essay.

"Why do you want my forgiveness, professor? Your acts made very clear that what you feel for me is nothing close to esteem or respect."

He tightened his mouth and paled; his silence makes you angry, deep down you've always expected him to be better than what he really is.

"Is that what you think, Granger? Maybe if you used your privileged intellect you'd manage to see 'my acts' from another angle," he spat, rolling his eyes, seeming suddenly so thin and so old. You remember you've misjudged him before and, at the end, he surged unpunished from your reasons to despise him, unpunished, victorious, crushing. You don't know Snape and you know it, but your pain, that resentful, small ball that'd grown like cancer, sometimes doesn't let you remember it.

"What angle, professor Snape? Tell me."

But he's silent again and raises his chin, defiant, unbeaten and hurt. Sometimes you can't stand him.

"Sufferer and insufferable professor Snape, that's what you are."

Something bitters in his expression and his face seem raw and unfathomable. You pick up your stuff and leave the painting on the couch.

"Take it!" you hear him yell, furious and strangely desperate.

And you turn slowly, condensing all your rage and frustration in just one, brief gaze.

"The only thing I still want from you is a reason for why you did it; if you don't give it to me, then don't ask for forgiveness."

Silence surrounds the whole house; you imagine him in a corner, watching you pick up your box, but he doesn't answer for long seconds. When you get close to the door his voice raises from aphonia and it's a roar and a broken yell.

"What's your fixation with the stupid reason, Granger? Why the hell does it matter? Are you waiting for me to kneel and beg? You want to be the victim of all this idiotic drama you started! They were just letters, for Merlin! Why don't you understand, bloody little idiot, that I really need you to forgive me? I didn't do it to hurt you!"

"Then why?"

And he seemed to want to destroy you with his gaze, destroy you slowly, almost lovingly, and you shiver, finding a different meaning in his way of seeing you. What's the matter, Hermione? Why are your legs trembling, your fingers? Are you afraid of him stopping being what he has always been?

He turns his head away. He seems angry at you, stiff with himself.

"I was angry, I did it just to vent, there wasn't any purpose as you think."

"Liar," you complained, and that sentence was so different from you. "You even falsified my handwriting. Don't say you didn't think about it, of course you did. You planned that for weeks!"

"I wanted to mess up with Weasley, that's it," he spits, crossing his arms.

"Well, you made it, professor Snape. He's not coming back to me. He doubts me and what may happen between us, and I have you to thank for that."

"Yes, of course, I'm the one to blame for that overprotected brat's absurd, childish traumas. If he really wanted you, he'd have taken you despite everything, but he doesn't even have the courage for that, he's a pushover."

You seem to sense in his words a different accent, a possessive, essentially masculine tone that scares, surprise and enrages you at the same time. Brat, pushover? Not that, not in front of you.

"Goodbye, professor."

* * *

Just as you predicted, she's leaving, you see her turning the corner. You couldn't hold your tongue. You couldn't calm down the envious, disdainful anger that lightens up in you when you hear her talking about Weasley.

A reason? It'd be easy for her to forgive you if you gave her a simple reason but you can't, because now you know it, now you know the name of your reason, you know the gears of your actions.

And that name leaves you in pieces. Stupid Severus Snape, stupid to the absurd, to the ridiculous. Jealousy, jealousy, for old Merlin and the ten thousand muggle virgins!

You'll never tell her because that'd drive her away irrevocably, because you prefer her spitting hate at you than putting delicately, tenderly, her rejection on your hands, like a pigeon's corpse. You won't humiliate yourself, you have dragged yourself enough for Lily and you won't again, not again, just shut up and hang on and live or survive without her, it doesn't matter, you have to convince yourself of that, it doesn't matter. But no, because you dream of her hair fading between the afternoon's shade and between the crowd and the smoke of the cars. When will your loneliness and the fracture of your possible happiness end? When will your old partner, bad luck, leave you alone?

* * *

As if it wasn't enough with you and your green, reproachful eyes, Harry, I still hear him, him and his skilful way of using truth as darts, of using it like a whip. "If he really loved you, he'd have taken you despite everything". He's right, isn't he, Harry? He doesn't love me enough; his love is not enough for us to be together.

Harry, don't look at me like that, you know I didn't want to hurt anyone, not even Snape. I never wanted to hurt Snape.

"Consider that, if it wasn't for him, we wouldn't even be alive, at least not me, probably you wouldn't be alive to fight, split up and then come back together."

I know it wasn't right, but you don't get it, I don't even understand the tangle of things I feel and live when I see him, when he apologizes to me, when I hug him or abandon him.

I think he's dangerous. He's not like the people around me, he's not like you or Ron, nor Neville.

I know you're right and that I owe him an apology, but it's incredible to owe an apology to someone who stabs you in the back!

And then tell me where can I find him, Harry, because he's not at Hogwarts; I've looked for him, believe me. I don't even know why I stay outside the dungeons waiting for him to appear. I don't even know why Potion classes are suddenly so simple, boring, too easy without him. It's weird, isn't it, Harry? Everything he causes is weird. I think I'm fond of him after all; sometimes I feel I've already forgiven him and that I'm mad for something else, for something beyond Ron, completely apart from Ron, maybe even from myself.


	30. Belle Époque

**Disclaimer**: Nothing belongs to me here, all rights to Rowling and Gato Azul.

* * *

**30: ****Belle Époque **

The sound repeats, sliding on the big, polished surface of the Ministry's floor; clicking of heels, deep murmurs, perfume odour, wood and flowers mixed with mint. She hears herself breathing quickly and sees her reflection on the smooth stone's wall. Always shaggy, noticeable between so many prim faces and big ponytails. She wonders if he has his hair in a ponytail, she had never seen him with his hair like that, and she hopes to never see it; the black strands distract you a bit from his ugliness, they make it fade away between the darkness. And she chides herself for thinking about such trivialities and for thinking he's ugly.

Too many people, she doesn't think she'll be able to find him, no matter how tall he is, how much he stands out as a black lamp, she doesn't think she'll find him. And she needs to, she needs to find him now because then her courage will shrink; the more faces she sees, the more she tells herself that it's stupid, that she doesn't have anything to do there.

She keeps colliding into people, pushing and shoving, and her hair drifts behind her like a lively bush. She follows the signs and enters a crowded lift, staying in a corner; everyone seems taller than her and they look at her as if she had just ran away from a mental hospital, or as if she's a lost girl. She gets out of there, it smells too much like perfume. A redhead man appears from one of the entrances and his steps echo. Hermione dares to ask him. The man tells her with a slow, drowsy voice that the Head of the Aurors had just left, but that she can go down to the lobby and maybe find him there. The lobby, that space overcrowded with perfumed people and sophisticated bags and impeccable suits. Hermione is afraid to search for him right there, but she goes down resigned, walking on the tips of her feet, trying to distinguish a figure, tall like a dark stick and a free, dirty hair between so many with gel. At least Snape never tried to look better than he was, never wanted to hide his disgraced features or mask the rancid smell that the cauldron's smokes imbued in him.

She peeks through the heads, runs to the left against the crowd, like swimming against the current of a shoal of fish that pushes and drags her. She stands on her tiptoes. Many unknown faces, not the one she's looking for. Close to the centre she finds a dark figure; she runs to him clumsily, everyone hinders her, she elbows and moves between that mob, but he's going too fast. He always gave her the impression of walking too fast. She got close to the man, following his back, without talking, walking between people. She looks at his black, long cloak, his unkempt hair, those military shoulder pats he didn't have before. What could she say to him, the little insufferable shaggy nutcase, who followed him through the big Ministry's hallways? She stops for a moment, and the man starts to get lost between the mass of people.

"Professor Snape!"

Her voice sounds helpless and childish.

The mourner stops and turns, hesitant and surprised.

Her again; every time he finds her, an anguished doubt overtakes him for a few seconds; he always has the disconcerting impression that he's dreaming or seeing an illusion. Why is Granger starting to create the habit of appearing in the most unexpected places and moments?

Snape looks at her, half-lidded eyes like two sullen gaps. He isn't transparent like that time at Hogwarts; he's rigid, his grimace isn't friendly, his attitude is dense and unfathomable.

"What are you doing here, Granger? I hope it doesn't have anything to do with Weasley."

Hermione has the urge to retreat, but she contains herself and watches him. It seems like the crowd surrounding them is starting to fade away in a slow walk.

He's looking at Granger through the crowd's foggy glass, with dozens of people interrupting her fearful, shaggy frame. There's something like a thorn in his intuition; he's angry at Hermione and scared at something he doesn't completely understand.

"I didn't come here to talk about Ron."

The man doesn't add anything to their unilateral talk, except his raised brow.

"There are too many people."

The lack of answers starts to discourage her from moving on. She gets distracted watching Snape's prominent Adam's apple. She feels like it can rip his throat just by its size, and she shifts slightly.

"Would you come with me outside?"

The Potioneer straightens to his full height, looking like a genuine lamp for a few moments; he walks in front of her with his chin raised and dangerous eyes glinting with rage. Hermione regrets having looked for him.

It's raining. The street is a grey area, hard and wet. Hermione's hair has fluffed up to hilarious levels. Snape looked at her, no trace of amusement.

"Happy? Why are you here?"

"I didn't think you'd be so curt, professor Snape," she says angrily, trying to ignore her reflection on a window to avoid feeling even more humiliated.

"Curt would describe perfectly your behaviour during your last visit."

The girl glowers reproachfully and regretfully at the same time.

"Is there some special reason you're here, Granger?"

It's still raining and drips smash against the pavement, falling from Snape's nose as if they clung to it, travelling on his hair and pale cheeks. Hermione doesn't know what to say, and just looks at him in the middle of the downpour. She shivers; she's forgotten her coat and her pink sweater is already soaked. Snape is capable of seeing beyond his intrinsic rage and takes off his soldier cloak, long, thick and heavy. He gives it to Hermione with a rigid expression, still stony, still impenetrable. The girl looks at the cloth she is offered and hesitates.

"Did you leave your common sense with your raincoat at home, Granger? Use it and don't say some Gryffindor bullshit. Now, if you excuse me, I have things to do."

She hasn't finished putting the robe on when he starts walking away between suspended tears, between the drips hanging from the sky. And she follows him by instinct; the warmth of his robe sheltered her, the remains of his tepidity, the traces still alive of his smell of fermented potions.

SSHGSSHG

You hear her step making _plas_ against the pavement, you hear the water's thrum at being stepped on, when defragmenting on the floor and her shoes' soles. You're surprised and intrigued by her need to follow you despite the cold water clouds threw, like transparent whips, quick, wet threads against the trees.

"Professor Snape," she whispers with a gasp as her breath fogs lazily. Her hair is stuck against her face, her hostile, shaggy hair. "Are you really busy?"

"Where is your question going?"

You stop on a corner, looking left and right. In front of you, blocks and blocks of rain and light wait for you.

"I once promised you I'd take you to the movies."

* * *

LA BELLE ÉPOQUE

Green and pink words interlinked, a slight smell of vanilla and chocolate, a warm noise of coffee machines, her and her profile and her curly hair like an old, French painting.

You went to the movies once; Eileen took you and you crammed inside her brown coat; that half gloomy, half melancholic place doesn't look anything like this one, that has a lot of melancholy, but nothing of gloom.

Paintings of bright, curvy women surrounded by flowers, by hints of flowers. It's warm inside; Granger doesn't take off your cloak, she covers herself with it, appropriates it, and that shakes you in such a visceral way, you're alarmed. As if she's covering herself with your shadow.

It's almost empty and the path to the room is surrounded by built-in lamps of kind lights. You wonder why you have cast your duty aside to assist such a pointless meeting. You look over your shoulder to Granger, who is touching one hair strand, and you don't need to wonder anymore. And yet you seem to be going to a bureaucratic office instead of a film screening. She's evasive and nervous, you're just yourself and frown when you see banners of romantic movies.

You push the big door and she enters before you; you follow her on the black carpeted stairs, you follow her until it melts in a high point with the room's wallpaper, and it seems she's getting inside a picture and inside you too, as you watch her for a while. For a moment you try not to sit next to her, but the way she raises her eyes to look at you persuades you and you go with her. There's just you and, in a corner, a couple kissing thorough and slowly. The screen's light illuminates them, they're black, loving silhouettes.

"The nerve."

She shrugs, probably afraid of you leaving her there alone. But you won't.

Everything turns dark and you hear her breath in the dark, you hear her and you sense her beyond your blindness, with her eyes wide open and too brown, like hazel. It smells like her and you know something bad it's happening with you, something that will only bring you problems.

"Professor," she whispers, looking for you in the middle of nothing.

You don't answer. The images start and her face is surrounded by shadows, her face painted white. She's looking at you.

"It's an old movie, they only show them here, it's not a crowded cinema."

"I already noticed," you quiet her down, without understanding your own sullen tone.

The movie begins. A tower lightens up next to the stairs; the image is beautiful, you have to admit it. You don't remember too much about movies. An old-fashioned woman shows a childish, clear smile. Granger never smiles like that, not to you. What are you doing there, sitting on that seat, pretending you still have hope? The plaited woman smiles again, with a lace veil on her head.

Where are you letting her drag you?

* * *

The plaited woman and a man with a pointy hat are kissing under a door frame, under a stain of the tape that advances slowly and fills her with noises and moving paintings, that tattoos in their eyes its heavy whites and blacks.

Hermione looks at him, because she wants to look at him as he watches a kiss. Nothing in him moves, nothing shivers. She wonders if someone had ever kissed him, and she's saddened. Snape is alone and she can't accompany him, she doesn't know how, and it scares her and it's too heavy for her.

"Why did you bring me here, Granger?"

It's hard to believe that undaunted profile is where the voice comes from.

"I thought you'd tell me; I know there was a reason and I thought you'd tell me today. I don't know why."

They don't speak anymore and, in the screen, sceneries succeed each other; dresses and the plaited woman with her collage of kisses and smiles that taste of something old.

Hermione doesn't like uncertainty. Hermione doesn't like staying with only silence in her mouth.

"Did you want to take me away from Ron?"

"Yes."

Granger vibrates and fixes her eyes on the screen. She doesn't need to ask anything anymore. Granger is a miniature scream and a storm too. Granger breaks and burns on the inside. She wants to run away, but just watches him, watches him so carefully, so deeply, she can almost touch him with her eyes. In her mind, the memory of his greedy, black eyes following from under the stairs appears. She looks at herself supporting her head against a half-blood's shoulder and she remembers.

She didn't see because she was afraid of exposing her gaze, of opening her eyes to the meteor shower. Snape doesn't move; it's like he has turned into stone. So neatly, so rarely pale. So far away from her, suddenly too intimate.

There are things Hermione hadn't thought possible, hadn't thought probable in a logical world. But when has the world been logical?

There she is, confirming the unimaginable.

There she is, discovering the hidden side of the moon, the concealed piece of the man she thought she knew. She is surprised by her own limitations; she is surprised by the speed with which reality is twisted in its hinges.

And she finds herself without any words in her mouth. She wonders for how long has she known, if she's really just figuring it out at this exact moment.

She doesn't leave, she's too upset. A stone breaking the quietness. And because leaving won't drive her away from him; him, who is expanding in her brain like a cloud of soot, like an invasion of burning oil and fire.

The big-nosed, pale man of hateful eyes whom she saw on her first day of classes is suspended in a mutism that consumes him, because of her. The man that used to humiliate her followed her hair's trail. And her? What does she feel? Horror, vertigo, a nauseating revolution in her stomach, thousands of bugs walking in her guts.

In the screen, a big, clumsy man walks like a clay beast, graceless. The bushy-haired girl twists her hands and changes positions consecutively, the man is stiff on his seat. The couple on the corner is still snogging.

* * *

**Note of the Translator:** the Snamione part, after 30 chapters, starts now!


	31. Mechanical Soldier

**Disclaimer**: Y'all know it.

* * *

**31\. Mechanical Soldier**

Hermione looked at the roof for long hours; the yellow light of a street lamp leaned on her window. She heard the city's weak noises, the night cars, very distant and very small voices. Snape's profile was sharply replicated in her mind, as if she was looking at him at that exact moment.

Snape was jealous, that was clear, but she wasn't sure what was the reason for that feeling.

Jealous that they were together, that they both could love each other and that he was alone. Jealous, of her? Jealous of his attentions, of their friendship? To think about him wanting something more filled her with fear, alarm. To think he wanted something more from her seemed too vain, too bold.

And yet something yelled at her that this was the reason. That the most exorbitant, scandalous and improbable answer was, in fact, the right one. The half-blood's silences, his pale, almost docile eyes, they didn't have any other explanation.

There was no other way to understand the chill she experienced when the black stare turned to focus on her.

And what was she going to do? To dig in until she found the truth? She wasn't sure she wanted to find it, she didn't know what she could do with that truth. Hide it under her sweater and pretend she didn't know anything? Tell the man she wasn't into him and move on without her?

She wished she was wrong, she wished it was all just an absurd, whimsical guess.

* * *

He wished he was wrong, but that bush of brown hair reminded him too much of the girl tormenting him. Insufferable Granger, waiting for him at the Ministry's gates.

The insufferable chit that neither let him in nor evicted him, that looked for something in his eyes, like an bottled specimen, behaving with a scientist's insistence that managed to exasperate and enrage him.

He didn't want to be studied, nor did he want to be treated like a reactive substance which you had to observe and fear a little.

He wasn't going to show her the extent of her invasion in him, he was going to keep his mouth shut and act like a stoic man, a man that deep down he never was, but which he knew how to portray well.

He looked at her, face blank and half-grimacing.

Suddenly he felt half hurt by Granger's snowy hair, by her rosy cheeks and the sparrow which sometimes peeked in her eyes. He didn't speak; she looked at his expression, embarrassment and fear latent.

"What are you here for, Granger? I think I already told you I'm not a specimen for your entertainment or your curiosity."

"I want answers, Professor Snape." She regretted it instantly. She wasn't actually convinced she wanted them.

"Nothing new with you."

The tall man walked in front of her; Hermione, for a moment, had the feeling he was discreetly running away.

"Professor Snape, do you want to go to the movies with me?"

"Of course not, Granger. I've things to do much more urgent than you."

But the girl's footsteps still resonated slightly behind him as his feet crushed sallow snow.

"You wanted to separate me from Ron, why?"

The quick figure that had been turned suddenly faced her, and she had in front of her a big, threatening nose; she retreated some steps. He was almost breathing on her face, his upset breath.

"Do you really want to know, Granger? Will you stop harassing me if I tell you now?"

Hermione swallowed and barely nodded, feeling like an idiot, feeling like he hated her. The thin, white face in front of her didn't move, just snorted loudly. Snape seemed, for the first time since she'd met him, cowering.

"Weren't you going to tell me?"

"Enough of your chase, Granger." His mouth seemed to regain life. "The reason is evident; use just a fraction of your brain, Mrs Know-It-All, and leave me alone. You won't get what you want from me, you won't humiliate me."

Hermione looked at him stunned, not truly understanding what was happening in front of her.

"What are you talking about? It's not evident for me, nothing with you is evident for me, Merlin!"

And a small fire was jumping in Granger's eyes, her medusa hair of living vines, moving on her face. Snape was furious, furious that she didn't understand him, that she thought him so absurd and insulting she didn't want to understand him. Yes, he was kneeling on her shadow, crouching in the image of her capricious, bushy curls; he was holding on a corner of her childish smile. But she couldn't see it because she was disgusted by her former professor, because a dirty old man didn't have any right to yearn for her.

Angry with Hermione, with the haughty girl, he decided to give her a true reason to despise him and leave him alone once and for all. She was talking like a broken recorder, repeating irritatingly the same sort of words.

"—you can't expect me to guess what are the rea—"

Granger swallowed her breath abruptly as she saw the half-blood raising his face. An aggressive, tense aura was coming from him, and she thought he was going to punch her, given the violent way in which he approached her; she wanted to retreat and got scared when she realized he was faster and swifter. He grabbed her wrist and his warm breath was on her face; she didn't understand what was happening, because everything had seemed so unreal, so unimaginable just a few seconds ago.

A pair of lips like caterpillars dampened her mouth and she felt a tarantula climbing her back and spine. She turned her head away; traces of Snape's mouth were still impregnated on her cheek when she averted her face.

"I disgust you, right, perfect Granger? At least you have the comfort of knowing why I did it." She tugged his arm, not managing to detach the pale, unwavering hand. "Are you satisfied, Granger? Are you now going to slap me because I've sullied the pristine Gryffindor girl with my snake mouth?"

When he let her go, she escaped so quickly he felt hurt even without her touching him. As he watched her retreating, crying with a reddened face and wet eyes, he knew he had just committed a despicable act. The weight and awareness of his age, his reputation, his ugliness, broke him a little.

Granger still retreated some more steps and looked at his black boots, pensive and trembling, touching her mouth as if someone had punched her there, as if they had just told her the worst insults of her life.

And when she raised her eyes to look at him, he knew she wasn't furious nor offended; if she cried, it was more for him than herself. The idiotic chit overwhelmed him with her pity, but he didn't even have enough strength to hate her for that. With her eyes of a little bird, she caressed him like a burdened man, like an invalid or a madman, and with a fulminant sweetness she looked at him directly and whispered: "No, professor."

No to everything, a gigantic, big No, a No almost saddened, a merciless No that abandoned him in his loneliness. A soft No that crushed any hopes he had left, those stupid, useless hopes he had dared to foolishly feel with her in the place of a long lost woman.

Snape's face seemed like carved in a tree, hardened to an unnatural level. Hermione was afraid again and then he, without speaking, without moving any of his face's frozen muscles, turned around like a mechanic soldier and continued walking on the avenue, under the weightless flakes that hung on his black coat and hair.

She wanted to yell at him not to leave, but she didn't, because she didn't have anything to give him, because she actually didn't want to love him, didn't know how to love him. And it was better to let him go than try to give him a chance that didn't truly exist. It didn't exist. It didn't exist.

Horror, a shudder, vague repulsion, that was what she'd felt when he kissed her. But the way it shook her to look at him disappear in a corner, she couldn't explain that one.

* * *

Hermione couldn't sleep, Hermione glanced at the windows pensive, Hermione sometimes cried on the edge of her bed.

She had seen him in Hogwarts a few days before, from afar, hidden behind a column. McGonagall had asked him to oversee a final test of History of Magic and she'd bumped into him as she was leaving her classes.

She watched him move his head, with haughty, aristocratic laziness, as he smacked a kid on the head in a reprimand. She remembered the cracked texture of his lips and his close eyes, too close on that occasion, as if they were going to get inside her.

The man turned his head and seemed to sense her behind him, because he looked straight at the column where she was hiding, right at her surroundings, directly to her wide opened eyes, fearful and brown. And then, without doing anything, without making any expression, he turned around and left.

Hermione couldn't stop feeling as if she'd done something really bad, as if she'd hurt a hidden part of her teacher, a part she neither understood nor knew yet. She couldn't fix him, because to rectify her mistake meant letting that kiss, which she didn't' want, to repeat. To let him put his lips and hands on her. Hermione's legs bent and she remembered those cruel jokes her old room-mates said about the greasy Potion Master; she remembered them saying that, for a woman to be able to shag him, she'd have to be blind, deaf and retarded. Was she that woman? The one that would dare to sink with him?

* * *

Harry crossed the Auror Field's door, wet with sweat and rain; his eyes were like green galaxies. Hermione remembered a few times when he looked like that, radiating complete happiness.

"How's your training going, Harry?"

His half-smirk was a mute, clear answer.

"Snape is preparing a mission, but it seems he wants to take only experienced Aurors. I hope that if I train more, he'll choose me."

"He's Snape, Harry; I think he still hates you."

"Yeah, still. But it's going to be important; they're creating a tracking spell: they put it on a Death Eater without them realizing it and then use it like a Portkey to appear wherever the Death Eater is."

"Like a muggle GPS," Hermione added.

"Something like that."

They found shelter from the rain in a coffee shop, deep in the city. Hermione seemed evasive and dejected; Harry thought curious that her glum attitude matched Snape's recent, hysteric outburst. "You seem a bit sad."

She raised her head and warmed her hands against her cup of coffee. "I'm confused about something."

"Does it have to do with professor Snape?"

Granger shifted in her seat, looking at another table, uneasy, noticeably nervous.

"Do you think the professor sees me differently now?"

The city's entered through the window, red, yellow, white. They jumped on the pavement, reflected by the puddles on the floor. They swirled in Harry's big, green eyes, mirrors that were big and kind.

"Yeah, Hermione, I can assure you he sees you differently now," he whispered, head tilted to the window, with his voice welcoming and slow, with a pensive expression not unlike him. Hermione watched him attentively. "Once, I would have said it's creepy; well, it is, a bit. But if there's something I'm sure about professor Snape is that what he feels might turn him into the bravest man I've ever seen." He shrugged, a bit embarrassed by what he just said and by what he'd say next. "Whatever happens between you two, Hermione, I think you should at least listen to what he has to say. I always underestimated him and, in the end, I was the one mistaken."

The girl looked outside, searching for the place where Harry's eyes were fixed, trying to see the same thing he was seeing at that moment, what he saw about Snape, about Lily, and about her too.

Hermione was in a blind spot, one where the brilliance she'd always been proud of seemed tiny and useless.

* * *

She told herself that no one, except a Gryffindor, would do what she was doing. A reckless, cornered, confused Gryffindor.

She had the impression that, no matter what she did, she would end in front of that door sooner or later. To live with uncertainty and guilt as chronic companions wasn't something she considered precisely as _living_. She'd rather put her hand inside the volcano, squeeze the reactive mass so it would blow on her face once and for all, or just disappear.

Besides, the small tragedies that happened in her when she remembered him leaving were exceeding her ability to feel miserable and disoriented.

She knocked on the door and some neighbours looked at her, with unusual curiosity. The door's wood was frayed, and the garden was far from being a proper one, it was more like a bunch of dry weeds growing all over the place. Snow had ruined everything, turning her into a wet girl with grandma's clothes and an absurd bottle of alcohol in hand, knocking the door of a big-nosed, bitter man who wanted to fondle her. She wanted to run away like a child and throw the bottle and forget about the tragic hero-murderer-wizard that planned on groping her. Did he think that suddenly just by being a war hero, or whatever they called him, gave him the right of messing up with her? Then, why was she at his door putting herself like a prey? She didn't know if she liked Severus Snape, or how, or how much.

Snape took his time opening the door; Jean heard him unlock the door and again, like an omen; the idea of running away came back. Prince's white face peeked through the space of the half-opened door and looked as if she was spit on his threshold or dog excrement. His absorbing eyes focused on the bow she had put on the wine bottle and seemed to be outraged.

"What kind of bad joke is this, Granger? Do you think I need to get drunk because of your reject?"

And he looked at the bow, getting angrier.

Hermione had thought of many logical ways she could use to justify her visit, but in that instant, every single one of them sounded stupid and didn't use any.

"Of course not, I just think something's not right. I'm not okay after what happened and I didn't dare come to your house with empty hands."

"You shouldn't have dared, regardless of the content on your hands."

"I didn't do anything inappropriate for you to be angry with me, Professor Snape."

The man stared harshly at the girl who was getting invaded by snowflakes on her hair, coat, hands.

"Get in, absurd woman."

Hermione entered, shaken at hearing him call her _woman_.

The room was dark and cold; at the end of the hallway there was a burned frame she recognized: it'd been the painting of blue flowers she had liked once.

"You burned it."

"You didn't want to take it and I always hated it."

"And why did you left it hanging on the wall?"

Snape ignore her and crossed his arms, standing in the middle of the room. "Why exactly did you come here?"

Hermione stood there, hands dropping and head low, looking at the floor, thinking about the man in front of her and thinking about her. She was waiting for him to tell her why was she there, why had he wanted to kiss her, why was nothing the same as before.

"Why are you here, Granger?"

The girl looked at him for a long time, as if asking for help. He turned his back on her and walked to the hallway; he wasn't going to wait for the pristine Gryffindor to enumerate the reasons why he didn't deserve her.

"I don't know why you settled on me, I don't know if I like you as you expect. I thought that, if I came here, you'd be able to help me."

He turned his head to look at her, standing in the middle of his living room, with her cinnamon hair, with her snowy, long sweater. He approached her slowly, without making any noise, and put his nose inside her fluffy hair smelling of vanilla and squeezed her hands, pulling her close, feeling her shivering, starting a shy, hesitant fight.

* * *

"Can't you love me a bit, Granger?"

Hermione breathed all the air around her, barely exhaling, with Snape's hands holding hers, his bony, cold hands. Suddenly his voice was raw, helpless, lonely. His breath licked her ear and she trembled to the top of her head, she didn't know if it was panic or instinctive pleasure. She wanted to break free, but she felt his nose still stuck between her hair. And she thought about how ironic had been his taunts about her hair, given that in the end he apparently liked it a lot, judging by the way he hid his face in it.

"You can't do it?"

Hermione asked that same question to herself, several times, but the unease of feeling him after her didn't let her think clearly.

"I could. I think I could," she whispered, voice dying in her throat, lying a bit, driven more by pity than by any attraction to the man. She tried to calm down, telling herself that maybe with time she could love him, maybe she would get used to it.

* * *

**Translator's Note:** "Snow had ruined everything, turning her into a wet girl with grandma's clothes and an absurd bottle of alcohol in hand, knocking the door of a big-nosed, bitter man who wanted to fondle her" is the best quote I've ever seen in a Snamione fic, I just love it. It's my favourite phrase in this story.


	32. Hidden World

**Disclaimer**: All rights to Rowling and Gato Azul.

* * *

**32\. Hidden World**

Snape relieved her from his cold hands and his creepy breath wandering around her head.

Hermione inhaled the air around her as if she'd drown if she didn't. The man stood in front of her and squinted, evaluating her.

"You aren't lying to me, Granger?" He straighten up to stare at her almost haughtily, talking with the same dangerous warning tone he used with the children of his classes. "I don't like to be lied to."

Hermione shook her head quickly. She felt like an idiot. With horror, she stared as the man moved his head forward, asking for proof that she wasn't lying with determined, unfathomably dark eyes and his pale lips were crossing the lights and the gap between them. Hermione wanted to turn her face away; she didn't. He smelled like Potion classrooms, like dungeons, like sour ingredients. A nearing mouth breathed next to hers. She finally had to allow a wet, exploratory, hesitant kiss to move forward through her like a snail.

To kiss Snape was something she ever thought about, not even in the most delirious brainstorm.

She followed with dignity the itinerary of a first kiss. And then she looked at him and thought for a moment it was all an illusion. That it wasn't her, but a ghost or a shadow that had met with the half-blood in the dim light. The half-blood that was staring back at her, also with a surreal halo of a hidden world.

Hermione Granger, what have you done? What personal tragedy have you unleashed so it'll end up blowing up in your face?

* * *

Hermione got home dirty of kisses. She got home with her socks wet and a persistent trembling in her lower lip. Hermione didn't want Snape as he wanted her. To be loved by him was to be crushed, it was to be subjected to a routine of love that she didn't truly feel.

Hermione esteemed the man and pitied him. Hermione was a Gryffindor and she was benign, that was why Snape could kiss her under the dim light of his living room.

Maybe, after some time, the unimaginable could happen and she might end up reciprocating; she hoped that was the case, she hoped for both of their sakes.

* * *

Severus is a lonely man, but he's never been an idiot. He notices Granger glances at the clock repeatedly when she's with him. He notices her lips receive him almost still, half-frozen and driven by obligation, more than anything else.

Snape knows Hermione doesn't love him. That doesn't surprise him.

What surprises and truly scares him is that he still kisses her; when she enters his living room looking like a martyr he dares to force her and hates her a bit as he fills her with his breath. He hates her for not loving him and for not having the guts to tell him that she doesn't want him. He hates her for having cornered him to that bitter scene where she pretends she's late to some commitment (that of course she doesn't really have) and she must leave or else she won't make it in time.

Stupid Granger, she has so much faith in her own kindness that she lets you, her repulsive Potion professor, kiss her, just to avoid hurting you. Is that it? She doesn't want to hurt you?

She does it anyway, and you get revenge invading her mouth with your kisses, very slowly, with perverse sluggishness and premeditated wetness, with pensive lips that don't move forward and stay still for some moments, static and full of a obnoxious, planned sensuality that you know exasperate and distress her.

But you only kiss her in the mouth because if you dare go beyond, she may banish you from her presence and kick you out of her paradise and crush you under her foot, like Eva must've crushed the viper that doomed her. Like she should crush you too.

Granger wants to play at being perfect, but it won't work with you. You won't make it easy for her.

* * *

Hermione looks at the man, looks at him between his dark nebulas, looks at his ghost hands. Snape tries a new spell, Snape the Auror. He shakes his austere wand like an orchestra director in a fancy theatre. A blue spark fades away quickly and lightens up his face, marking his stony features.

No one is watching her in the Ministry's hallway, it's just her and, inside the hall, her distracted teacher. Hermione feels something burning in her chest, as if she had a piece of incandescent rock in her guts. Hermione has the feeling she's standing in the middle of one of those moments that stay stuck in one's memory; she knows that the man's image will stay with her for a long time; she knows it means something, that there is a truth flowing in front of her which she can neither see nor grab. Maybe she should go in and tell the half-blood she's scared, maybe she should, but caution always stops her primitive actions.

She keeps watching him through the half-opened door. The man repeats a deep chant, almost sinister, and the blue light appears again and dissipates like a bright vapour, like sun's mist.

Granger startles a bit when the black eyes reach her. It seems as if he had known she was there from the very beginning.

She walks behind the man through the plaza's mosaics, to the exit. People cross their way in an eternal shuttle. Snape is a silent, black, and resentful cloak walking in front of her. Snape doesn't say anything when they're alone in the streets, doesn't try to kiss her when they turn a corner, doesn't look at her. Hermione doesn't know if she would want the contact of the dry lips, but she knows their absence is a small, distressing hole. Hermione always feels like she's wrong when Snape is concerned, she always feels guilty, and that makes her think something has been wrong from the beginning.

They reach a desert avenue, a snowy moor unmarked by passerbys' footsteps. There, the man yanks her wrist until he hurts her, smacking his mouth against hers with ire, absorbing her breath without giving a break, until he leaves her without air. Hermione gasps and ask for peace. Those aren't loving kisses; they're fighting hits, wrathful, vengeful.

She doesn't say anything nor does she complain, but her eyes are wet and weak, her lips swollen and trembling. Maybe Hermione thought about complaining about that caress, which was more like a mistreatment, but the man had an angry face and seemed to crush her with his gaze; then she finds herself stuck and tiny and full of anguish.

In the oily, dim light of a coffee shop, Snape pulls her apart slowly with his sharp eyes. The girl sighs and hides in her cup and pack of cream. She doesn't need to hear his yells to know he's furious. She is dust, a feeble paper skeleton before devastating fury, before the feeling of always making a mistake.

Milk expands in her cup of coffee and shifts like a liquid continent, expanding and fading away. He raises her chin and again assaults her mouth as a waitress watches, slightly uncomfortable, from another corner. He leaves her confused, hanging to her cup and the tablecloth and wishing to be able to run away from there.

"What's the matter with you, Professor Snape?" She hopes he takes pity on her shaky voice or the broken face she thinks she has.

"It's curious you still address me like that," he says, his vehement ire making him spit a little. "Very peculiar."

She doesn't dare ask anything else. They eat in silence; the man glares at her from time to time and then drinks long sips of his cup of coffee, looking at the window with infinite bitterness, and Hermione looks at him with a strange mixture of fear, resentment and guilt. They are not going to last long like this, something is about to hatch in their hands, to explode right in front of their faces.

* * *

_Is it my fault?_

_Snape, what do you feel? You don't speak, just look at me with your serious, really black eyes, with your closed-off expression. Sometimes I can swear you don't just dislike me, you also hate me. You grimace, raise your chin with disdainful arrogance that I don't get. I always feel like I've done something wrong, you scold me as if I was a small girl and blame me for anything that comes to your mind: leaving my bag on the couch, for not locking the door, and then when I least expect it you kiss me, hug me, but I could swear you don't love me; I look at the clock as your open eye like a fish's search for mine, as you crush my lips with your mouth and your nose squeeze against my face and sticks into my cheek. You let me go like an used rag and disappear to the kitchen for a long time. Then I'm sure you don't love me and I'm full of rage because I don't love you either and I hate that you force me to be with you, I hate your hands and your weird taste, your taste of intruder in my mouth. I tell myself that I'll tell you I can't stand you anymore, neither you not your habits, and neither your way of speaking to me._

_I will tell you, you deserve it, I want to do it and I've already decided it._

_But I don't, I don't do it because when I peek to see you without you realizing it, I find you sitting at the table with your head on your hands and you seem half broken and I realize that, deep down, loneliness is burning you and it scares you. As it scares everyone else. Just for today I won't tell you. I'll let you reach for me before I leave and get my face full of you breath._

* * *

_Why do I do the things I do? I must be crazy, I must be just a little bit._

_I don't love him, Harry, I promise you I don't, but today when he cornered me against his worn wallpaper, I took a strand of hair away from his face and caress the gigantic, magnificent bridge of his nose. And his face was something else, it seemed like suddenly, he didn't know who I was._

_I touched him briefly in silence, under the dim light; his face was a pale reflection of my memories. I tucked his hair behind his ear with a fondness that only existed in the second that action lasted. Does it happen to you, Harry? Does it happen that sometimes you just want to adore someone for a day? Does it happen to you that one day you wake up wanting to pretend you love someone?_

_But his eyes, Harry, his wide-opened, fixed eyes went through mine. He seemed surprised and he got away from me and didn't try to touch me for the rest of the evening._

_I've seen him smell the sweaters or scarfs I leave on the couch. He thinks I don't know it, but he touches them briefly, with his mystic hands, he sinks his nose in them and watches them for a long time, as if he was looking for a map. And then, Harry, I think he really loves me and I'm scared witless and I also want to smile, which I don't want to understand and scares me._

_His images come back like a river in different ways: his presence in the Great Hall, the uneasy certainty that he was behind me as I answered a Potion test, the hopeful doubt when Dumbledore told us to trust him, that kind of nostalgic trance that overtook me when I saw him dead on the floor, when I thought he was dead._

_But I swear I don't love him._

_I find him rubbing his neck with a pained gesture, I watch him trying his new blue spell tenaciously. I don't love him, but I want to._

_As he read on the couch I try to kiss his cheek and he turns his head away and looks at me as if I was a stranger. There's something in me that breaks and dampens and turns into little pieces._

_I realize something. I don't love Snape, Harry. I don't love the man that watches me with haughtiness and raises his hooked nose, I don't love his uneven teeth nor his sour smell. I don't love the wizard of the stealing kisses and profaning hands. I don't love the Snape that talks to me, watches me and touches me. But the one beyond, the one that hides from me in a kitchen, the one that looks for me in the things I leave forgotten, the one that touches his scars… there's no way I'll leave that one on his own._

_I'm not going to send you this letter, Harry, I don't know what I'm doing, I don't think you'll like it._

_I can't promise you I don't love him._

_Is compassion somewhat like love? When I felt his cheek, when I looked at his black pupils, I thought I could destroy his loneliness, I thought I could fill him. Is that how love starts, Harry? To know that you're needed? Maybe it's a trap; sometimes I'm convinced I love him, but I doubt and I cower and step back._

_I'm a Gryffindor, Harry, but I'm afraid of loving him._

* * *

If things turned out as planned, he'd watch those Death Eaters twist at his feet. He hoped so. He shook his wand and a weak, bluish figure appeared in the emptiness.

Those morons were hiding in groups; if they localized just one of them and used the spell, there was a high probability that, when they appeared there, they'd land in a lair full of enemies. An ambush directly to their house, and quite surprising. Of course, there were disadvantages, one couldn't find out the number of Death Eaters hiding through the spell. To appear like that, blindly, always implied some risks. Maybe they'd find too many enemies, he couldn't know it. That idiotic Potter was mistaken if he thought he'd come with him; he'd already noticed his persistence in drawing attention during trainings and the zeal he'd put in distinguish himself in front the whole troop, that naïve brat. He wouldn't allow him to stick his reckless finger in the plan he'd worked so hard to come up with.

* * *

Hermione watched the half-blood sitting in the dim room with a book on his legs and hands full of blue sparks; she watched his black, greasy hair, too limp; the silhouette of his sharp nose was stuck in her memory.

The man was permanently angry, dry and frowning; when he touched her his hands turned aggressive, pushy. His mouth was like a black hole, absorbing her air.

A piece of her smile and her peace had been extracted from Granger. That fragment of life where Snape looked at her with quiet, docile eyes and let her support her head on his shoulder. That seemed so distant now, Hermione felt she was the cause of the estrangement, and that was something hard to bear.

She walked to the kitchen in silence, preparing something to eat between the dishes' warm vapours; she hadn't done that since the last days of the house arrest.

When Snape was concerned, Hermione was normally disoriented, watching herself make mistake after mistake, not knowing how to fix the harmonic hours they'd spent together, not knowing how to piece together the broken parts of their past, complicit meetings.

Hermione, beyond their problems, wanted Snape to be happy someday.

She put quietly the plate on the table in front of Snape and started to eat next to him; he didn't say anything but looked at her as if she was a bug in his hand, capable of crushing her if he wanted to.

There was something between them that might be irrevocably destroyed, but Gryffindors had never been good at resigning themselves to just drown.

She asked him questions about the Ministry, about Minerva, about the weather, about anything that came to mind; the man answered drily, deep in his ruthless resentment.

At dusk, Hermione picked up her bag and her hopes and waited for him to open the door. There, under the threshold, she let herself be dragged by Snape's sour reject and she told herself she had to shut him down. Under the floating lights of the street lamps, under the door's lintel, she did something she never thought she was capable of. With her hand she turned the half-blood's distracted face and there, in the middle of his pale lips, she left her own, offered them as an altar on the prince's mouth. A bird's kiss, a wet moment, slow, of warm velvet. Snape's hot breath released on her face, a smell of coffee entered her lips.

The man's eyes were two asteroids stuck in her atmosphere. Hermione felt dizzy by the intrusive stillness in Snape's gaze, by his black pupils so perfectly round, and what seemed to be happening deep in those tunnels.

The mourner stepped away, looking at the floor elusively, turning pale. He bid her farewell with an empty, absent voice. Hermione had never touched him by her own account, and she was starting to think he didn't want her to do it. She climbed down the steps of the entrance and looked at him one last time.

"Bye, have a good night, Severus." The last word seemed to float a few more seconds between them, like a dark dragonfly. Snape shook as he closed the door; Hermione didn't know if it was outrage or surprise.

* * *

**Note of the Translator:** Healthy relationships? What is that? Also, only 10 chapters left!


	33. White Lanterns

**Disclaimer**: Everything here belongs to either Rowling or Gato Azul. I'm just the girl that speaks English and Spanish.

* * *

**33\. White Lanterns**

What did Granger pretend to get from him? Not even by being a Slytherin could he understand the force that moved her through the world, or the reason for her actions. He assumed that she hated his presence, that his kisses disgusted her, he had thought so, until that night when Hermione had kissed him willingly, without hesitating, without exuding fear.

Snape didn't have good intentions, not even with her; if Granger pretended to mock him in some way, then she'd have to pay for it. That was why he kissed her harshly, rudely, with his lips swollen of rage, avid to release their poison.

But Granger always seemed to be above him, always capable of leaving him without weapons in hand, without belligerent sprits.

* * *

_Professor Snape may be a mystery even to himself._

_His love-hate for me, or whatever he's feeling, isn't doing us any good; he seems lonely even with me and I just feel more lost and more miserable every day that passes._

_That kiss I gave him only got me close to him for a few moments; deep down it was like kissing a ghost, or a heap of air dressed in black._

_Why did he pick me, of all people? Why wasn't some Slytherin girl he'd never insulted before? Why me? Is this some kind of punishment?_

_Sometimes I think it is._

* * *

They met each other in the middle of London's streets with too much accuracy to blame it just on coincidence. Again they walked without saying anything; they always walked in silence, without looking at each other, without reaching with hands or words. They walked like strangers; Hermione thought that, in some ways, they were in fact that, total strangers.

"Do you want to go to your house, Severus?"

He hated when she called him by his given name, that pretence of intimacy was too hypocritical for him.

As soon as they crossed the house's threshold, Granger went from her stupefaction to a trance of feminine diligence that took her around the house, dusting and rising clouds of dirt everywhere. She tucked the few paintings, polished the scarce cutleries, prepared something to eat and the house ended up saturated with a white, cosy vapour that revived the appetite.

Snape was determined to ignore her. She sat next to him and looking at him from the corner of her eye several times. The only noise was the cutlery crashing against the plates.

"Why do you kiss me, professor… Severus?" she amended half-way through.

The man took another spoonful to his mouth and chewed thoroughly before he deigned to answer.

"Does it disgust you?"

"No."

They kept on eating; Granger couldn't have a question twisting in her mind for too long, her mouth always ended up betraying her, letting the words out like unruly caterpillars.

"Why do you kiss me?"

"Because you deserve it."

The man was gritting his teeth; his voice had completely sounded like a reproach, as if Hermione's question had been a completely different one.

Granger looked at him for a long time, making him feel sick and furious. Granger and her eyes of soft hazel, like a bird's.

"The hell you're looking at?"

"You think you disgust me so much that your presence is a punishment for me."

"Don't you dare talk with that arrogance to me."

"What arrogance, Professor Snape? I'm not being arrogant, I'm just…"

She extended her hand, searching through a non-existent mist; her fingers reached Snape's sunken cheek. Why did he think that to kiss her was to hurt her? Did he think he was that bad, that disgusting? He, who had at the end saved their lives.

"It's just I've never seen you clearly."

The Occlumens frowned. His lips, once half-opened, now closed with stubborn tightness.

"You think you're perfect, right, Granger? You think you can fix everything. Saint Granger, owner of justice and sage of virtue."

"You don't disgust me, and it's not right for you to say so." Her gaze was determined, lightened by the hallway's blue light; her hair was a golden bonfire. She dispelled the shadows with her face born in darkness.

A pair of immobile, dry lips greeted her. Hermione probed into the darkness of black hairs; her hand went on discovering and squeezing a nape. Snape didn't close his eyes; his pupils, almost next to Hermione's, were wide open and watching her in such way, it took her breath away and she ended up sucking the man's lips as she tried to breath; instead of a freeing gasp, she had a wet mouth stuck to her teeth and the half-blood's warm exhalation in her throat, like a suffocating wave of summer.

Prince moved his eyes quickly through Hermione's face with a piercing, acerbic gaze, but he didn't say anything.

* * *

Granger was almost always incomprehensible to him. At some point she seemed to have decided to stick by his side; as weeks passed, she got inside his daily life and filled every space and every second with her smell of vanilla and her clear expression.

The reason why Granger always arrived early to his house, prepared him food, cleaned his bookshelves and stayed next to him reading some big book, Snape would always wonder about it. Why didn't Granger leave him? Why did she seem to resign herself and self-impose the duty of accompanying him? Maybe it was simply her Gryffindor nature, the same one that the man despised on the outside but was fascinated with on the intimacy of his deep thoughts.

With time, with Hermione's unprecedented endurance to his ill-temper and his neurotic complications, his anger died, his desires for retaliation; his urges to hurt her calmed down, melting into one single remnant of guilt. Granger saved him from Nagini's bite, locked herself with him in a house arrest, protected him against Death Eaters, and finally stayed. He could still remember her, entering the small cupboard with her bushy hair, hair in a sling and feet bared. When was Granger going to give up? What other women would've done what she did?

And yet it was not enough, it wasn't bearable to let her cross the door with her distant aura, with his hair like a wavy veil and hear her say goodbye with that respectful but distant kindness that defeated him and left a small, daily failure at his feet. He didn't think himself capable of going on like this; someday he'd end up destroying his relationship with Granger as he had done with Lily and he'd be alone again.

Sometimes he almost preferred that.

* * *

Most of the time, Hermione watched the same Snape that yelled in classes when she was a child; sometimes she found him peeking through a window or standing in the middle of the dark in a hallway, then she thought about all the things she still didn't know about Severus Snape, which made her feel somewhat uneasy, but never like that one afternoon.

She went upstairs to look for a book she had given the Potioneer, and in one of the drawers, she found the picture.

_Lots of love,_

_Lily._

Her green eyes smiled and blinked in the tangible piece of the past; it almost smelled like her, she could almost feel her in the air, like a dance of leaves in space. Then Hermione pictured that half-blood, sitting in the dark, watching, yearning, melting with that piece of paper that was the last thing he had of that dead woman. Jean felt suddenly empty. She thought about Harry and the exact resemblance of his green eyes and Lily's, almost the same stare, almost the same slowness to blink and that swirl of moss and deep waters in their pupils. She thought about Snape, who looked for her kisses in silence, lips cracked, with a weary face that couldn't resign itself to loneliness and then she thought about him, sitting in front of the bureau, watching those same eyes she had in her hands. She was distressed about what might be of Snape's life.

A shadow slipped through the floor; Jean felt a presence in the door's threshold, a bittersweet smell of ferment. He was there; an eclipse covered half of his face, a disturbing, dissolved echo of anima, of bad omen.

"I rightly guessed you'd be snooping around my stuff."

The girl showed him the picture; his limp hair was falling on his shoulders, the white face, his aura of defeat.

"How many years have you been watching this picture, Severus?"

His hostile expression shifted into a grimace of surprise. Snape seemed to want to memorize the details of Hermione's face, to reveal her thoughts, strip her muted gazes. But he didn't do anything like that.

"I found the picture recently. On the other hand, I've had Lily with me for more than twenty years."

It was Granger's turn to be surprised too, standing in front of the silhouette under the door frame that spoke to her like a sprit from a parallel, misty world. If Snape was feeling inspired for surrealism, then so was she. She walked to the tall, grieving man; the hallway's light was yellow and watery. In that surreal atmosphere, she stepped on her tiptoes and hugged him around the neck. The Potioneer retreated a few steps; the girl was clinging to him, everything smelled like vanilla; shaggy, bushy hair brushed his chin.

There she moistened his dry lips. Snape tasted like a rancid era, like bitter secrets, and he was stiff like a pole; the tip of his nose was between them, as always. The Gryffindor put her soles back to the floor and separated her face from his.

"Saint Granger comes to sate me again?" his voice sounded annoyed, but his eyes were lethargic, almost cold. She didn't say anything, hiding her head between his black clothes.

"I'm not a saint, stop mocking me. I'm just afraid for you."

The man was torn between shock and fury long after Granger left. Lily was still smiling through the paper; that worn smile stung him. Snape hated to see her smiles except that, the one that seemed to betray him for the first time.

The annoying sensation that he was a bug in Hermione's hand hadn't completely disappeared.

* * *

Harry cleaned the sweat from his forehead with a dirty shirt he carried in his bag. They sat on a bench in the park; it was cold and wet. Sporadic water dips dampened the paper bag where they carried their dinner and coffee. Hermione pulled out the buns and put in Potter's hand the warm container of liquid.

"You seem tired, Harry."

"I am tired. Snape forces us to train in the camp even if it's raining or hailing. I actually think he's getting worse lately."

Hermione chose silence as her answer.

"Despite how hard I've worked, despite the fact that I didn't complain once, Herms, and held my tongue so I didn't disrespect him, he sent me to the fifth rank," he said the last thing followed by a bitter spit.

"The fifth rank?"

"Just paperwork or stand and guard, nothing of high-risk cases, much less something related to the Death Eater's lodges there are still around."

Hermione watched him with something like condescension as they linked their hands. So many years together, so many events, and she didn't feel capable of confessing her problems.

"You know, Harry? Professor Snape, the same one that doesn't let you level up, he…"

The boy pierced her eyes with his green, stony pupils, his deep emeralds. She blushed a shy pink.

"He what?" Potter insisted. A cricket sang between the grass; the almost empty streets seemed like the scenery of a blue dream.

"Sometimes he… he seems understandable. I don't think it's wise for you to start with the hardest missions, you've been barely a few months with the Aurors."

Potter nodded grudgingly. Hermione always behaved like a grandma; normally he appreciated her prudence, but sometimes it was exasperating.

"Hermione, you and Snape get along, right?"

She let out a long, noisy sigh that seemed to leave her without air. "That's one way of seeing it. I've been on the brink of leaving him several times, but there's something that just stops me."

Harry nodded, understanding a small part of what she was trying to say.

The youngsters stayed there for a long time, between the darkness and the lanterns' white circle.

* * *

Hermione put her ear close to the half-opened door; she listened to Snape's usual deep tone and another's man slow, rough voice.

"I know it's urgent, but to use the spell, contact with a Death Eater is necessary."

"As you wish, sir, but I remind you, you and Potter are surely the first ones on their list. I doubt they forgot your role in the war."

"I'm perfectly aware of that, Niepce. Just worry about bringing me useful information that I preferably don't already know about. Now, if you excuse me, I have things to do."

Steps resounded through the room. Granger moved away from the door as far as time allowed her and tried to pretend she was looking at the interesting decorations on the roof. A thin, young man crossed the threshold; his arms were almost stuck to his body and his bizarre red hair gave him a look of walking bonfire. He looked at Jean darkly and went downstairs, making a lot of noise as he climbed the stairs.

Snape appeared through the same hole from where the skinny redhead had emerged. He was massaging his nose's bridge with barely controlled exasperation; when he noticed Hermione's presence his mood seemed to plummet even more.

They went out to the street. It was raining for the fourth time that week, the streets were full of rivers and devoid of people. The girl opened her big, red brolly; she had to stand on her tiptoes to cover Snape from the cold water's currents. For several blocks she followed him with difficulty, fighting to cover the Auror's tall, moving frame under her brolly's shield, but Snape's steps were too long and too quick, and he didn't seem to have the smallest intention of walking slower or helping the girl with the bother that was shielding him from the rain. Jean ended up with her socks soaked after jumping so many times on puddles, while Snape walked around them with the elegance of a cat. The bastard didn't even look back to see the sulky, wet mess that his companion had turned into; he even quickened his strides, making it even harder for her to reach him.

"Could you stop for a moment, or hold the brolly?" she yelled at him, unsuccessfully trying to reach him; what the man did next left her stunned. He grabbed her by her sweater and with wild fist, threw her against a wall, causing her to crash violently and drop the brolly. Hurt and irate, she turned to face him; a warm thread slid from her forehead and dissolved with the rain that dripped all over her face.

"Why did you do that!"

A man dressed as a muggle was waving his wand a few meters in front of her eyes; a piece of the wall exploded close to her, right in the place where she'd been before Prince had pushed her. Snape took her by the arm and hauled her unkindly, forcing her to run faster than what her legs were capable of. The one with the dangerous wand was following them closely; she could hear the noises his feet made when they smashed against the pavement.

"First Johnson and then Snape!" the pursuer yelled like a hyena, water exploding under his feet. Hermione threw him a hex that managed to slow him down for a few seconds.

"He's an idiot, there might be muggles close!" the Head of Aurors yelled, fed by adrenaline. They reached an alley. The man pushed her onto a sliding fire escape that was connected to a balcony; maybe they could hide up there. Hermione grabbed him by his cloak or anywhere she could put her hands on to help him climb up. Once there, they crouched, twisted in on themselves, looking around and barely breathing, in a sphere of tense arms and legs. They opened their lurking eyes and squeezed a bit more against the railing, waiting.

* * *

**Translator's Note:** As the author stated in this chapter's comment, Snape is described in the books as ugly, as in skinny, big-nosed, shallow-faced, yellowish and crooked teeth, greasy-haired UGLY. Not all of us can be Victoria Secret models, after all.


	34. Man-anima

**Disclaimer**: Everything here belongs to Rowling and Gato Azul.

* * *

**34\. Man-anima**

They squeezed against the rail and waited.

"Do you see him?"

"Silence."

Hermione had her nose stuck between Snape's dripping, black strands; the man's hand was fiercely clutching her arm, so hard he was hurting her.

"As soon as you can, climb the other stairs; it seems that upstairs there's a door to the building," the man whispered with such a low tone, it reminded her of a viper's hiss between bushes. Hermione looked with her gaze the stairs which Snape had mentioned: rusted, weak tubes stuck to the wall resembling steps.

They stood there, breathing and watching around; nothing moved, apart from the rain's drops that fell to the abyss.

"Is he gone?"

The man didn't answer; instead, he stood up, pulling her with him, very slowly. Hermione stuck to his side and looked everywhere.

"It looks like he's gone, professor Snape. Maybe we should go down."

"Give me a hand and aim with the other," he told her as he slid his long, pale fingers between hers. He started to walk as if they were standing on a thin layer of ice; he reached the first step and showed clear intentions of going down, while instructing Hermione, telling her to stay close to him and never stop aiming. She clung to the half-blood's hand as she watched him descend the first steps. It was almost an instant of frozen time, the second when she got down one of the steps exploded and the Potioneer pushed himself up while hexing and throwing lighting around. The floor where she stood was pierced by a red light that left a big hole in the metal and a trail of smoke, smelling like sulphur. It had almost hit her on the leg.

She heard Snape's voice like a roar from her past, watching him yell incomprehensible words as he held on a yellow tube and swatted the air with his furious arm.

"Your body will be our carpet, Snape, and your little friend will be our personal bitch!"

The man conjured hexes mixed with swearwords she had never heard from him before. She joined him in the fight of spells against the man attacking them from the ground, just about to tear down the platform where they were standing. With a hand busy performing a shield, Snape reached and helped her climb the stairs that led to the second level; he climbed right after the girl, standing precisely on the same step; they ended stuck against the wall.

"Up, Granger! Are you waiting for an invitation?!"

The Gryffindor climbed the steps with difficulty; Snape was close to her, she felt him shake behind her. She saw with horror as the weak ladder was dragged a bit by both their weights, mainly by the man's, who manoeuvred next to her.

The Death Eater laughed loudly; his very blonde, very dirty hair stuck against his face, distorted with perverse satisfaction. "I'm going to hang your arrogant head where the other blood traitor's enemies can see it!"

"Fuck you, son of a bitch!"

Hermione only focused on climbing as fast as she could, considering that Snape himself was getting in her way. The rain worsened; the drips coming from the sky stung her face, clouding her gaze.

"Faster, Granger!"

She kept on climbing; a lighting bolt spread in the grey sky, like the tongue of a cosmic snake. She felt as if someone had punched the air out of her; Snape yelled in her ear, desperately grabbing her shoulder for a moment, burying his nails. Hermione gritted her teeth to avoid screaming too.

"Up," he murmured, voice choked. Jean obeyed, fearing of not feeling him behind her, but when she climbed the next two steps the pale hands were still holding the bars; the jerky breathings still blew against her nape, persistent. She heard the Death Eater still laughing, still yelling curses.

"We're almost there, Severus. Just three more."

"Get down!"

The ladder vibrated, penetrated to its empty core; a noise of bent metals, of fire trails and rushed gravity exploded too close. Snape ripped with a howl; his white hand holding the stairs, so close to Hermione's, lost its grip. The girl turned her head as the lower level of the stairway separated from the wall and plummeted, watching her professor separating from her to sink in a long fall. The blond man was aiming directly at her, smirking; the half-blood was approaching the ground like a black lump. Hermione didn't hide behind her magic; she used her chance to stop the Potioneer before he smashed against the pavement. The assailant watched her with disturbing ecstasy, then he looked at the man levitating and immobile; his mouth stretched a few more centimetres. She was busy keeping the Auror on the air; he didn't even seem conscious. His ebony wand focused on the bushy girl; the poor girl had widened her eyes with the incredulity of a cornered child.

"Don't fear, filthy bitch; I'm good to compliant little—"

_Sectumsempra_.

Hermione saw the transformation of that confident face into a gory uproar, in a rush of broken fingers, in an abrupt, definite fall. Still holding on the stairs, half undone, she lowered the Potioneer, guiding him with her wand, and finished climbing the ladder to the second level. She got into the building with an _Alohomora_; it was empty. As far as she could see, it was an abandoned mill. She found a door that opened to the alley where they'd been fighting.

The blonde moaned, twisting on the floor; next to him, the tall, half-collapsed frame of Snape was kicking him weakly on the ribs. Then the half-blood dropped his wand and fell like a crumbling tower. Jean ran towards him, hearing the effort her lungs were making to pull air. Her forehead was bleeding, she didn't even know when she'd been hit. She kneeled, overwhelmed with fear, next to the grieving man. The blonde man moaned slightly, without opening his eyes; the pavement under him was stained red.

"Professor?"

Those black eyes were gaps barely opened; Snape growled but couldn't say a word. Hermione didn't understand what the problem was, there was no visible injury. She pulled his arms to force him to stand, but he stayed with his head thrown backwards, body limp and still. Hermione groped him, looking for any injury; her hands dampened with a thick, hot liquid that dripped from her fingers. She heard him growl again, and then she understood. Several curses had struck him in the back; as she was climbed the ladder, he used his own body as a barrier to protect her. At that moment, Hermione's eyes leaked on the scarlet, wet back.

Snape loved her more than she'd thought, more than she wanted, more than she could've believed. Why?

She carried him on her back as much as she could; she'd come back for the Death Eater if she could. The only thing she had in her mind now was Snape's pallor, his distant gaze and forced breathing. She couldn't levitate him, because even if they had had the luck of not meeting any _muggle_ up to that point, she couldn't count on that luck anymore.

Several blocks she walked under the rain, sobbing while supporting herself against a wall, feeling the man's breath next to her cheek and his deep groans whenever she did a sudden movement.

"I'm going to take you to the hospital, please… please."

And her voice derailed at the beginning of tears. What the bloody hell had Snape in his brain that pushed him to do those barbarities, those insanities so outrageously un-Slytherin?

She shrank under the man's weight, which after several blocks had turned into a slab, a stony cross that she had to carry. Everything was her fault, for not denying him from the beginning the love she didn't feel for him; it was her fault and she had to bear that.

She cried loudly as she looked at the empty, infinite street she still had to walk. Snape shook on her back, apparently overwhelmed by being dragged like that.

"Stay like that, don't move, I can do it," she lied a bit; her knees were trembling, bending under the weight of holding two bodies, hers and her professor's. "Someone help us, Merlin."

The passengers of that bus couldn't just ignore the vision of the soaked, crying girl who was carrying a dying man. Something rare to see, something harrowing.

* * *

Hermione knocked three times, brushed her hair over her face a bit, and held her flower bouquet with a certain pride; she knew damn well it was a bad idea to give him such a gift, but she really couldn't think of anything else. To gift him one of those embroiled leeches he'd liked to collect had seemed a bit morbid.

The door took a long time to open; an almost transparent face peeked through the gap. When he recognized her, he left some free space so she could get in.

As soon as she was inside, she gave the Auror an abrupt, clumsy hug that almost sent him to the floor; he was even paler than usual, and his eyes were isolated by intense eyebags.

"Professor Snape, Severus, how are you?"

The man-anima was at her right, discoloured like an old picture.

"Flowers? A gift quite appropriate for a burial."

The girl had expected an answer like that; she didn't pay him much attention and left them on a couch. Snape didn't have any vase to put them in.

"Did they treat you well in the hospital?"

"I don't understand the _muggles'_ love for inserting needles. I guess I have you to thank for having taken me to that place."

The girl just looked at him as if she hadn't heard anything.

_Hermione Granger was weak in the face of morale; Hermione loved discipline, courage and tenacity, and she'd never seen them so vivid in a man as she saw them in Snape, her former professor with a big nose._

_Hermione Granger had never felt so loved as she felt when she looked at her protector's bloody back. She had never felt so much guilt and relief together._

_Hermione repeated every rude, inappropriate, illicit and despot things he'd said and done in her presence and yet, she couldn't erase from her memory the shiver she'd felt when, as they put him on a stretcher, he took her hand before they separated him from her._

_Hermione J. Granger had understood for the first time in her life what it meant to be loved. The people on the waiting room had stood there, watching her cry when the stretcher carrying the man faded away in the white hallway, between the crowd of nurses coming and going. An old lady got close, trying to comfort her, and gave her a handkerchief, but she didn't realise the soaked girl wasn't crying of fear, nor anguish. She cried of something similar to joy._

_She, the girl with the big teeth, _Mudblood _and obnoxious know-it-all, had managed something that many couldn't: she'd managed to be loved, and she was thankful for it. Immensely thankful, and relieved._

At some point they'd ended up sitting on the couch; she was sure her face was completely red. Snape breathed slightly, close to her.

"Why did you defend me like that?"

The man watched her intensely, without answering.

"It's a pity the Death Eater escaped."

"Not really," the half-blood said, but despite the fact that Hermione asked him several questions about it, he didn't say anything else.

* * *

At his age, it was difficult to hold any real particle of true hope; all his life he'd been waiting for something, a revolution of fireworks, a tornado that destroyed and remade everything, and yet the only thing that'd happened was precisely his life, his years and his youth.

With time, his impetus and his childhood's plans had faded away, had dried and ended up being just dreams that seemed so far away, he couldn't believe his mind had truly conceived them.

Granger was the reanimated ghost of one of those fantasies. Snape didn't have enough faith to trust her. Snape, despite himself, despite his bitterness and his scepticism, stubbornly looked for her in the smell she left on the corners, in the cushions where she sat.

Snape, maybe in a stupid reflex of foolishness, was starting to doubt Granger's indifference. The way she cried next to him in the _muggle_ sanatorium made him think that maybe, deep down, she held a quiet fondness for him.

Why had he protected her? He hadn't even needed to think about it; he had to prove that, in some remote part of him, there existed at least one sole reason for her to reciprocate, he had to rub in her face he wasn't the bastard everyone thought he was, or at least not completely.

* * *

Hermione, systematic and always prudent, asked him to let her heal the wounds. She was already standing next to the bed with stubborn modesty, holding cotton, alcohol, disinfecting potion and all kinds of substances with volatile odours that made Snape remember a collage of images of his house arrest, of Hogwarts' Hospital Wing and the old man who ate through a tube in the _muggle_ sanatorium.

The girl, wearing her best prudish expression, asked him to take off his cloak and shirt, to prevent the man from thinking about any funny business. Snape undressed with the same roughness he'd have used to brush an old couch. He didn't remember having been exposed before anyone else before; maybe Minerva had seen some part of him while taking care of him in his coma, but Granger… Granger's fucking hands were trembling, he realized it even if he wasn't watching.

She stared as he laid between the sheets; his too-pale back seemed like a swell of foam, a liquid descended from light and shadow. In the middle, like a burnt eye, was the skin scorched by the hexes. Hermione tried to avoid getting nervous, putting the wet, cold cotton quickly, and she noticed how the half-blood's skin got goosebumps, maybe preparing for the incoming pain. She put in the small hole a green, slimy potion that warmed up spontaneously when she shook it and that slid, languid and thick, to the exposed back, exhaling a bright smoke and causing the wound to exude a smelly foam. The man shivered; Granger watched as his arms trembled, managing to hear the man's choked, deep groans.

"Take it off, it's enough, take it off, please Granger."

Soon he felt the burning potion being washed away, water softening the pain.

"There, it's gone, now I'm rubbing the salve, bite the pillow if it hurts."

Granger's hand was too cold; the smooth tissue of her exhaustive hand walked on his burn. He couldn't avoid complaining slightly.

"I'm done, don't worry, don't worry."

A drip of water dissolved on his back; it dampened his vertebrae, then more fell, one after the other. He heard Hermione's sobs, sobs of a profoundly aged woman in the room, stuck in time, made of dark velvet.

"It's not fair you always end up like this."

The warm weight of Granger's head rested on his lungs, her hair spread on his naked skin like a veil; her hands extended like flowers, one on his ribs, the other on his shoulder. Some of the girl's breath extinguished on his spine. Snape stopped breathing, he was full of electric bolts, of tingles. She was half laying on him; her habitual, vague presence of vanilla was turning into an almost physical body of open flowers.

"Thank you, Severus."

The girl's warm weight abandoned him; after a few seconds, he heard the delicate sounds of glass vials knocking each other. He stood up without moving too much to avoid igniting the pain; he put his clothes again without looking back.

* * *

Hermione knew she only had to let her gaze wander, she just had to open her fingers slowly, because the truth was that she'd liked to look at the long, white back, she'd liked the blue aura of the half-blood's hair, she'd liked to discover that Snape's eyes were dark brown and not black. The image of the long, thin face repeated itself in her brain like the reflection of a thousand mirrors. The truth was that, as she waited for the man to open the door and let her go, she was hoping to wait just a bit, to look at his eyes against the light once more and learn the exact colour of his tricky pupils.

Hermione had to explain to herself that new way of seeing Snape, that tiny chill when she heard a voice too deep in the middle of the hall. Snape's white face peeking through the half-opened door was also peeking between the gaps of her intellect. The echo of his smell and his way of speaking started the clocks around her, blew the light of her night lamp, filled her eyes with an unknown kaleidoscope. She remembered clearly the day she'd met him and thought about how distant that was… they were so distant from those: from that young teacher who ate when Dumbledore said so and that anxious girl.

Hermione knows that, deep down, she'd always feared him, his humiliations, his contempt, his sharp tongue, and now his love. That love that wouldn't reach her, that wouldn't hurt her if it wasn't for the image of her half-blood teacher inevitably building in her memory over and over, which told her it's too late to leave unscathed, she's not going to be able to escape intact from her own feelings.


	35. The Throbbing Flame

**Disclaimer**: All rights to Rowling and Gato Azul.

* * *

**35\. The Throbbing Flame**

With the years you've learned to mistrust, to always hold some amount of wary caution, to never declare victory before certainty; that's why, when you saw her in front of your house, wet by rain and waiting for you with softened eyes, you decided to believe there was some other explanation. You mistreated her, you vaguely remember having told her you were busy and that she could leave if she wanted to. Whatever, you were sure that sooner or later she'd end up leaving; she turned around and left. You followed her with your eyes through the street. She hesitated between all the people walking next to her, with her pink sweater and improvised braid. She seemed surprised when she found you looking at her at the distance and, against all odds, she came back to reach you again.

She whispered some things that you soon forgot because, right after your words, she closed her eyes and you saw the pink of her frail lids; she looked for you blindly, sensing your lips' corner in space and kissed you in the middle of the street, between the car's exhalations and the _muggles_' robotic walk through the city.

She looks for you in your house's shadows, she waits for you in some clandestine alley, she smiles from the kitchen while as she shakes some pots. And slowly you're starting to believe that maybe, that _No_ from that first kiss you gave her has been turning into a _Yes_, that, in some unknown way you don't know, you've managed to change her mind. You watch her fixedly as she sits and looks at you straight in the eyes. You don't find the former anguish; you don't find her wariness and mistrust. It's she the one that initiates a kiss, it's she who ignites it and takes her hand to your throbbing flame's heart. And you can't, you can't believe it's true.

* * *

Hermione practices her smile of shy, clumsy flirting and just like that, with a distant song blowing through the room, she takes his hands and insists with sweetened stubbornness that he dances or moves with her, even if it's just in that uncoordinated hug of theirs. They spin around slowly and the man's brows arch completely. Hermione doesn't remember having seen him so surprised before, he truly doesn't seem to know what to do next.

"I already warned you I don't know how to dance, Granger," he murmurs with some irritation as his feet struggle to take another step.

"Call me Hermione, Granger is too formal."

They let go of their hands; black eyes seem to harden. Snape is, like always, a gloomy frame protected by silence and in the lack of light.

"Why are you still coming here, Granger?"

The girl remains quiet; her big eyes wander confusedly around the half-blood's pale face. His chin is raised, thunder seems to light up his eyes, illuminating him from the inside.

She flinches, her gaze dull and surprised; she doesn't like Snape's raw and threatening expression, she doesn't like when he talks to her as if she's his enemy.

"I thought you wanted me to come."

"I can't find any reason for you to be forced to do what I want."

Jean retreats, watching the window nervously. The man's tightened jaw, his fisted hands, made her uneasy.

"No one is forcing me to come, just like no one forced you to do what you did when the Death Eater attacked us in the alley."

"You're not in debt for that; the world isn't ruled by your bloody Gryffindor philosophy."

He walks away, opening his big, dusty book, and distracts himself with old sentences and his wand's movements in the middle of the dry air of his solitary house. She stares at him, looking beyond the white, transparent skin, beyond the hooked nose, and sees it, she sees it clearly: Snape can be more than that for her, more than she'd have dared to believe.

"I'm still coming, Severus, because I want to see you."

The Auror's gaze raises to hers and stays there, fixed and unfathomable.

* * *

_There are many things you don't know, maybe don't even imagine, I'm sure you don't; you're not a man who hides in probable alternative worlds. But still, I know you dream, despite your hard, severe cover, you're a man like any other and you must dream. Have you dreamt about me, professor?_

_Today, when I said goodbye to you, I thought about how different we were, about how weird we must seem to those people watching us walk on the streets. You and your sceptical face of eternal sarcasm; me, that I usually seem soft and clumsy when talking. Today I wondered, seriously, truly, what did you find in me? You once mocked me, despised me, felt only this disdainful indifference towards me. Tell me, what's different now?_

_And what has changed in me for you?_

_I see you crossing the door's threshold with your black clothes and frown; I see you constantly, when I peek through a window, when I think about old songs, when I open my eyes in my dark room at night. Your voice still walks in my memory, your exact expression forms, your pauses when talking, your gaze, your face's lines._

_Severus, you're tied with me, with the things I lived. Don't push me away now, Severus, not now that I'm already distressed when I think about what I'd do if I saw the hole of your missing presence._

_Maybe I don't know much about you, nor about your stuff, or about what you think, but I realize you somewhat run away from me, you try to evade me. Severus, it's enough of my doubt, it's enough of always trying to shield myself from you; I don't want to fear you. I want to reach you now, I want to see under your skins of silence, under your continuous masks._

_Severus, I'll tuck away my prudence again, I'll cast it aside._

* * *

She watched him closely; he was sitting in the couch with a book on his legs, head thrown backwards, facing the ceiling, with prim lids closed. Hermione studied his face's tones, the yellowish lines caused by the sunlight coming from outside, the blue shadow created by the house's walls. And the eternal frown, as steep as a path carved in pale sand, like a little finger's imprint that had sunk in your skin. Snape's nose rose like a cannon, or like a mountain on the horizon. She simply watched him from the kitchen table with engrossed depth as the clock kept ticking.

She walked around the sofa where the man snoozed, and when she reached him and saw his translucent, thin face, his expression and frame, those black eyes opened and glanced right at her. Snape had in his eyes a vibrant fluttering, a blazing tenderness, a voracious love half toppled that burnt and left her stunned, fixed on her spot.

The man remained still, watching her with so much resigned bitterness and so much silence…

_The aurora woman walked to him, unconquered, emitting an intangible murmur of light under her shoes._

Hermione stumbled with weakened ankles and murky reasoning, and between her hands she held the pale face of a discoloured soul, or maybe a transparent, resurrected man. Snape's face seemed to emerge from a parallel world full of whiteness.

_She stood in front of him, with her hair like a brown veil, her eyes always wide open, always clean and harmless._

She pushed a strand of hair away from his face and decided to see him as she hadn't wanted to in the past. Hermione had her belly full of roses, her chest like an open window of big flowers, of throbbing flowers. Hermione wasn't the same child with her head full of dust and books and blind eyes on words and old sentences. Hermione was finally starting to feel the smell of dampening soil and roots and fleeting butterflies.

Snape didn't move; she caressed one rough cheek. He was just a set of eyes, armoured and immutable.

"What do you think you're doing, Granger?"

She pushed the dark-haired head until it reached her stomach and she squeezed the strands of black hair and the ears and the nape.

_He breathes in a warm, sunken space, Granger's sweater scratches his cheek with its thick threads; her hands cooled his hair's roots and she squeezes him against her until he can hear the faded throbbing of her heart at the top, beyond his head, like a star._

"I'm tired of doubting. I love you, Severus, don't push me away, I really love you."

* * *

Loneliness is hard to swallow, it's hard to assimilate the idea of chronic isolation, of the constant company of emptiness and his own insignificance. Severus had to tolerate all of that; the mere idea of Lily had been his only company and only incentive. Severus couldn't give up because that'd be to relinquish the meaning of his existence. It was true, although he didn't think about it; it was true that he'd wondered (every day of his celibacy and his almost-religious lockdown) how would it feel to abandon his silence, how would it feel to take a woman's hand, how would it feel to be loved by one. Anyway, he never thought about it for long, nor did he imagine much about it. He didn't like to think about it, it always turned out impractical, upsetting and caused him a sudden breeze of desperation. Occlumency had almost always managed to calm him down in moments like that.

But no amount of Occlumency could calm down his brain that night.

Hermione appeared to twist his mind's walls, to tear it down piece by piece and fold them. When she said those words, while touching his face, something foreign possessed him. A fervent craving, a hunger for closeness so old and so buried by time, he'd almost forgotten about it.

He'd have wanted to recast her on the couch next to him and kiss her and take her caresses and tender gazes, all of them in a cluster, all of them in just one moment. But he couldn't do that, it wasn't even right; he just twisted his hands around Granger's waist and tightened his jaw without speaking. He saw for the first time the dark hole, the gigantic black mouth opened and hungry that hid in his apparently haughty and indolent air. He was the kid that cried in a corner of his parent's house, he was the boy infested with resentment, looking at Evans and Potter living their wonderful lives as his turned to shite. He was the neurotic, bitter man that hid in the deepest, most sordid dungeons to ruminate there over his plans of revenge against the world. He needed, with all his strength of his emptiness, for Hermione to show that love she was talking about, he wanted to seize it with his teeth, he wanted to open her hands and empty them, smear them on him like an immortality potion. But he could only grasp her lap like a terrible, demanding child.

* * *

After speaking, Granger felt the man bury his face in her, sticking his nose in her stomach and squeeze her like a cushion. The thin, long were grasping her sweater like claws. She could only see Snape's rigid shoulders and his hair like petrol falling and twisting in her fingers, which were still holding his nape.

After a few minutes, he separated slowly, with an ambiguous expression. He stood up and disappeared in the dark house.

* * *

In the beginning, the weight of Hermione's words seemed like a wall between them wherever they went. Granger was nervous and saw Snape's expression with a saddened start. His mind always seemed to be busy in some remote, pensive thoughts.

She followed him to the grey bubble that was his house, doubting if she should do it. There, the man that had been so silent since a few days ago finally started to uncover his face's indifference. Finally, something started to unknot in him; that hidden, black depth of his eyes turned into a semblance, a shade, that Hermione had never seen.

She sensed him, standing in the middle of the room, coming like dusk. He opened his dark cloak for her, like a cloak of constellations, like an entrance to a universe of deep stars, a hallway to smoke, clocks and mystic liquids where only he could go. His solemn, darkened hands rose in a velveted climb, of sweetened foam. Snape found her waist and very slowly, as if she was a coloured glass doll, he connected her with his warm presence of sublimate shadows. Many eyes opened in Granger's hands, watching in the dim light, looking for her teacher's face. They found the land made of skin, touching it without looking, searching like a lost, amazed conqueror. How could she had him close for so many years without having imagined this moment could exist? Prince's slow kiss on her cheek (on her cheekbone, beyond her mouth) was a wet dialogue; she liked to think that maybe it was the reason of the past, the culmination and arrival to something, to something that started with her hand holding the Occlumens' black strands.

* * *

They took each other hands, got lost between the _muggles_ in the city, kissing in the complicit darkness of an old cinema, right there where they had once exchanged sharp glances. They were finally the loving couple drawn against the light, the art nouveau curvy painting of curly hair and meeting of lips between flowers and cats and capricious tapestries.

Holding the man's hand, Hermione walked through the streets, shiny with rain; she watched both of their reflections against one of the shop window. She looked carefully at the strange couple they made: a shaggy girl with big eyes holding the hand of a tall, thin man. In front of the truth the reflection showed, Granger felt strange, out of her past life and the former parameters of what was normal and possible. She, the Gryffindor bookworm, was holding Snape's pale fingers, the hated dungeon bat, and yet she could say it hadn't been something so strange or so impossible, she wondered why they hadn't felt something might've happened between them.

The world was starting to organise into a structure of chaotic sparks, gazes raised, interlinked hands; reality was turning into an infinite, red horizon, into something beyond physical, to the metaphysical. And she saw that universe just by the kisses of a very thin man. Hermione's eyes opened to the language of the stars, just by looking inside his black eyes.


	36. The Solar Eyes

**Disclaimer**: All rights to Rowling and Gato Azul.

* * *

**36\. The Solar Eyes**

She fixes her scarf and watches the pavement again with a thick smile and big eyes; she has always liked to stop and watch street art, she always liked to think that they can open windows to other dimensions, portals on the city's simple cobblestones, in old London's grey fences. She walks to put some coins in the cartoonist's beret that waits on the floor, then she goes back to the nest that Snape's arms created. She looks at him, raises her face and finds his big nose, his thin face and that defenceless gaze so unusual of him; it seems like she's the only one he watches that way.

They keep on walking to a hidden coffee shop, where they'll say some thick, scarce words and then they'll kiss to shorten silence, time and distance. She has the theory that there is no better way to make him tell the truth than to take it directly from his mouth, with sips and intuition. Snape seems like a different man when he kissed; Granger supposes it's the same as when he prepares a potion. He does it very slowly, probing around. To kiss makes him cautious, his lip's corners curving in welcoming, continuous folds.

Snape talks little, despite the fact he's been Jean's biggest subject of analysis. She asks him anything: she asks him if he's tired, if he likes his job; she once asked him about Eileen. Hermione looks for him in the details, in his books on the shelves, in the way he drinks coffee, in the texture of the palm of his hand. Sometimes he feels overwhelmed by that inquisitive exploration, sometimes he believes and waits for her to take his loneliness by the hair and burn it to the root. Sometimes Hermione asks about things he doesn't want to hear, much less mention, and suddenly they seemed thrown into the sterility of an unavoidable silence. She becomes sad when that happens, her eyes age a bit and she caresses the half-blood, reproaching herself for not having done something for him in the past.

* * *

_Severus, I like so much to watch you snooze on the couch, always with a book on your legs. I also like to see you when you eat, I like to imagine how your laugh would sound, even if you've never let me hear it. Severus, I know you're not handsome, maybe you're not even young, but you know? I don't care in the slightest; there's something in your face, in the infinite noise of your voice in my memory, that makes me think you're beautiful in some silent, imperceptible way._

_Since when do I like you? I could say that ever since we were together in the house arrest, maybe it was that "thank you" you whispered in that cupboard where we hid. Sometimes I think I've loved you since a long time ago, but I can't lie to me; if that was the case, I wouldn't have taken in stride the fact that Voldemort's snake had bit your neck. For a long time, I didn't want to believe you were guilty, I wish I had never stopped believing in you. I feel that I should apologise to you, but anyway; in reality, you and I didn't know each other, maybe we were in the same place, maybe we saw each other daily, but we were complete strangers; sometimes I suspected you were different from what you seemed, that you were more than your funeral robes and your faithless grimace. Some of us should have tried to help you, I'm sorry it wasn't me._

_I wish I could explain to you that there's something in me that grows and squeeze when I see you, like that day when we had to take a bus and you moved forward before I could to make the bus stop; I'll always remember you under the rain, with your eternal cloak, with your nose that stands out wherever you go. Now your image lightens up again, my eyes almost reach it… Downstairs my dad is talking on the phone; I think about the fact that he doesn't know about any of this, that he doesn't know what you are to me now; I'm afraid that everyone says you have deceived me, that you gave me a potion so I could fall in love with you. I'm afraid they call this slow process madness. It was hard for me to love you, Severus; how hard was it for us to get close and learn to care for each other, maybe, in fact, we have been too sane, but they probably won't see it like that._

* * *

_Did you imagine something like this could happen, Albus? There are certain situations one discards as a possibility in life, there are people one stain with a blur of oblivion and indifference, she was one of those people. Not even you could've seen that coming._

_I had the certainty I wasn't going to be able to reproduce my feelings for Lily; in some way that's true, Granger and Lily are not the same, but it's something similar, made of the same stuff. It has the same strength from twenty-three years ago, a strength I thought didn't exist anymore._

_At the beginning I was only worried about being rejected by her, to not let her touch me; now that she doesn't run away, now that she's there and that I see her gaze shift, that she kiss me with her eyes, now what, Albus? Normally I don't care about ethics, you know I've always despised that rules dictated by a bunch of hypocritical, decrepit elders. Yes, I'm not twenty years old, yes, I'm not what a young girl hopes for, but you and I know she's not an average girl, you and I know nothing is stopping me, I have nothing to hide anymore. Potter already showed my naked life to the whole magical community, another scandal doesn't worry me too much, but I fear that Granger's resolve isn't actually to stay with me; I fear that, when people criticise her, she'll decide she'd rather leave. I know she'll eventually go; what can I do with that knowledge that embitters everything? That leaves everything with a resentful, frustrated taste._

* * *

The half-blood was standing in front of a bookshelf, touching the books. His long finger walked on the encyclopaedias' spines, his eyes half-closed as he read the titles and murmured; the girl, standing on a ladder, was sweeping the dust off the bookshelves and sticking her hands on the manuscript collection Snape kept in the highest part of his shelves; in her search, she also found small jars with extravagant bugs floating inside; she grimaced with distaste and kept on looking. A small, blue book ended up in her hands. She browsed through it without much interest. She recognized Prince's small and tight handwriting; she flipped the pages, full of entries in Latin, name of substances and modified Potion formulas. Between two yellowish pages, there was a photo; the boy in it was quiet, just blinking, with a glimpse of nervousness. Hermione watched the picture's old ink; it took her a few moments to recognise the person. She turned around to watch Snape, still bent on the bookcase's second shelf, focused in the encyclopaedias' rows he still hadn't checked. Granger turned her attention back to the photo, to the boy's thin, long face, to his murky eyes, to the creamy sharpness of his colours; he was looking at her, the same man that was checking the shelves was looking at her from a grey past. Young Severus' eyes were glassy, preceded by long musings and conflicted voices behind them; the boy seemed to be thinking about something very far away from the camera that was portraying him. He had this way of looking full of craving, of blind, vague anguish, of a precocious severity and, right in the middle, some hostile vulnerability. Back then, his eyes seemed more like greyish windows than two pits of armoured depths. Hermione smiled, despite the sadness and the compassion she felt when she watched the passing of time in her professor's expression.

She climbed down some steps and showed the picture to the man.

"This is you."

He averted his eyes from the book opened in his hands to look at what the girl was offering him.

"Yes," he answered curtly and went back to his reading.

"When did they take this photo?"

"I was in my last year of Hogwarts," he answered again with the least possible number of words.

"You've changed."

Snape didn't say anything; he put the book on the shelf and kept on browsing through the titles. Granger walked down the stairs and followed the Potioneer.

"Did you find something useful?"

The girl gave him the small blue notebook where she had found the photo. "Here I found some stuff related to the subject, they may be useful."

He nodded without removing his gaze from the shelves.

"Can you give me the photo?"

For the first time in a long time, he seemed clouded by a question; his eyes wandered on Hermione's face.

"Your face has hardened; I like the expression you have here, it's easier for me to see you."

The prince's eyes were widened and fixed with a confused gleam.

"Can I take it?"

"I don't see the reason for your interest, but if that's what you want…"

For Hermione, the way he turned around to continue his search was the equivalent of a shrug.

"You seemed as if you were worried about something."

The man faced her again, without having much desire to continue that conversation.

"In the picture, you seem worried," she clarified. "How was Hogwarts for you, Professor Snape?" Sometimes she forgot to call him by his given name; she reproached herself for having called him professor, because something made her think that fact made him uncomfortable.

"It doesn't matter, Miss Granger; it was a long time ago."

His silence was like a passive reproach; she looked at him for some moments, he seemed somehow evasive, distant. She was starting to see some kind of fear under so much impassivity, an old scepticism that didn't let him believe she truly loved him.

She never thought she'd feel so much compassion precisely for him; once she had heard that nothing moves a woman more than the possibility of saving a man, maybe it was true.

She walked forward and hugged his back. She held on tight to the black clothes, opened her hand in the middle of the half-blood's chest and felt him breathe; black hair brushed her face; cold, rough hands extended over hers; the blue notebook fell to the floor. Hermione buried her face in a polite shoulder. She breathed in strongly and squeezed more tightly the thin body she was holding in her hug.

"Severus, I love you, talk to me."

Over her hands, his grip turned stronger, so much that she already felt Snape's lungs expanding and contracting.

"What do you want me to say?"

"I thought you considered me obnoxious, insufferable in your own words. What changed? What is going to happen now between us? What am I to you? What do you truly think—?"

"You always demand so many explanations," Snape whispered as his hands caressed Hermione's wrists. "I realized you weren't what I thought when you decided to stay with me despite the fact the Death Eaters could kill you."

Granger sunk her chin in the professor's collarbone, snuggling her head in his neck.

"You're much more than Gryffindor's typical hypocrisy," and again his long hands interlinked with hers. "You're more than what I—"

Wet lips travelled on Snape's neck, kissing his scars, making him shiver with half pleasure, half pain.

Hermione was surprised when she noticed how he turned towards her without letting her hands go; his magnetic, voracious eyes searched for her in the dim light. He smashed against her clumsily, half knocking her down, half holding her, infesting with kisses, aggressive and tender, her face, her hair, everything that appeared in front of his eager, helpless mouth.

Hermione groped without managing to hold him, it was like kissing with fire tongues, with the pillar of a formless bonfire, burning and with six arms. Snape was breathing deeply, dampening her cheek with his warm, quick breath. His arms tangled and untangled in constant flopping, in a loving battle to hold one another. Finally, firmly attached to him, she caressed him with concentration, with persistence, she kissed his neck's bite, thinking she somehow was erasing it a bit, she was erasing the fear and pain it must've meant. There were no more snake's unholy jaws, only his deep lips, looking for the exposed length of her skin and her marks. She heard him exhale a hoarse moan, sinking her even more in his body; he pushed her head and her indomitable hair against him, so she kissed more, so he wouldn't stop. He appeared to want and destroy his long loneliness, he seemed to think it was possible if only she stood tangled with him. Hermione didn't hesitate, she just caressed the tearing with the tip of her fingers and the edge of his benevolent lips, she heard him exhale loudly again. Snape threw his head backwards and admitted defeat until he was almost crouched. Jean leaned back to watch his face; no one before had seen in his eyes that greedy fire with that kneeled, eager adoration; Hermione shivered by the fixed gaze, transparent and terribly naked, that Snape was smearing on her. How could the cold, sterile Potion Master be capable of looking with the eyes of a warm storm and implacable bolts? She knew she was seeing him as he truly was for the first time, and she wanted to cry, because she understood what his constant silence and strides of a proud soldier meant; she understood that none of that was authentic, that Snape's only truth was that solar gaze, absolute and vulnerable.

She caressed his cheek and he thrust forward to kiss her, but before he could reach her one of the table's candles lightened spontaneously. Both looked at it, kiss half-undone between them, to the place where the light had appeared.

"What's that?"

"It means I'm being called from the chimney. Wait here, it may be an emergency."

The girl remained still as the climbed the stairs, but she finally felt she had to follow him; she reached him on the second floor and waited for him, standing on the door threshold, avoiding the face on the chimney's fire.

"What is it, Niepce?"

Snape's arms were crossed, head bent downwards, trying to understand the man's intention.

"Death Eaters attacked again, it was now Potter, Zubiri and Dennis. They went hard on Potter, as it was expected."

A tense pause extended in the room, the fire's crackle was a constant, slow murmur, similar to the voice talking in the ashes.

"Where is he?"

"St. Mungo, and he wants to see you; actually, we all want to see you, sir; this strategy is not working, we have to—"

"I'm on my way, Niepce; meanwhile, take the statements."

The fire dampened, the room was grey and Snape was a tall, black cluster in the middle of emptiness. She was looking at him from the door, eyes always big and always watchful, fixed on him with anguished expectation.

"Potter is hurt, apparently."

* * *

Molly Weasley was sitting on one of the hospital's benches, twisting a handkerchief, looking around in an uneasy gesture. When she saw them appear in the hallway she got up, like pulled by hurried strings, and walked to them determined; she hugged Hermione and told her Harry and Ginny were going to be happy to see her, then she turned to Snape and looked at him hard, about to let out a reproach.

"Severus, I thought you'll take better care of the Aurors. How many had gotten hurt until now?"

The man grimaced, annoyed.

"The Auror's job implies these situations; apparently some have the idea that it's my duty to protect them as if they were Hogwarts' brats. If Potter wants to ensure his safety, it's for the best he finds himself some bodyguards and devotes to something more… appropriate for him, maybe giving interviews."

Molly's face reddened until it seemed like a tomato.

"You're supposed to be their leader, they're your responsibility!"

"My responsibility is to catch Death Eaters, not be the babysitter of a bunch of reckless brats."

Hermione stayed hidden in prudent silence, just watching the mouths open and spit reproaches from one side to the other.

"And how many have you caught so far?"

"Thirty-six in two months, more than what the last Head did in a year. Of course they're furious, of course they want to kill us; if Potter doesn't agree then he should leave my ranks."

The woman turned her red head to Hermione as if asking for support, but the girl bit her lips and shrugged.

"The professor isn't omnipotent; I think he does what he can, and I don't think Harry is even thinking of quitting, this is our war, after all."

Molly calmed down a bit after a few moments of silence, she even gave the man a conciliatory glance he didn't take into account. The three of them walked to the young Auror's room.

"I thought you wouldn't find out soon, Hermione. Minerva sent you an owl, but we didn't think you'd arrive so fast."

"The professor told me; just today I had some Potion classes with him."

Thorny, awkward mutism unleashed between the three.

They reached the room; a strong smell of antiseptics came from it, several nurses were leaving the place, greeting them with a slight nod before continuing their path through the long, white corridor.

The Auror Niepce "match-head" greeted Snape with a pile of documents and an uninterrupted monologue about the three attacks. Harry was waiting on his bed with some impatience; the two other wounded had already fallen asleep. Granger walked to her friend; she was a bit surprised when she noticed Ginny half hiding behind a curtain. The redhead hugged her with something in her eyes close to tears.

Harry smiled at the vision of the two girls standing in front of his bed.

"What happened, Harry?"

"I had planned to meet Ginny in a park, they attacked me on my way there."

The mentioned girl fisted her hands and wrinkled her nose. "Three against one, they're all cowards."

"And what did you do?"

"To be honest, I was about to lose, but a bunch of _muggles_ appeared, and they had to let me go."

Ginevra glanced at Jean. They could still hear the redhead's rough voice on the other side of the room. Molly joined the small meeting and dragged the girls to a place far away from the stretchers, arguing that Harry needed to sleep for a bit and that it'd be for the best to let him talk to Snape.

The three women started a long chatter in a corner.

"Harry has fought enough; maybe it'd be good for him to stay away from this for a while."

"I think they'll still see him as a target, they won't forget who he is," Granger whispered to Molly. Ginny was quiet and looked fixedly the boy's quiet face, laying in the distance. "Maybe they should give him some protection; in fact, the bodyguard thing wasn't so crazy, it may be a good option."

Molly tightened her lips, pensive. Both Granger and Weasley turned to Ginevra, surprised by the thoughtful silence, so unusual in her.

"What do you think, love?" Her mum put a hand on her shoulder as if looking for her in the middle of her pallor.

"I want to marry Harry."


	37. The Mystery of a Flash of Lightning

**Disclaimer: **Everything belongs to Rowling and/or Gato Azul.

**Warning**: NSFW content at the ending of the chapter.

* * *

**37\. The Mystery of a Flash of Lightning  
**

Hermione tried on the blue dress her mum had gotten her; matched with her striped socks and unruly hair, it didn't seem like the best option for a wedding. She had to admit that, just like everyone else, she thought it was a rash wedding, but the frantic, bittersweet way of Harry and Ginny's kisses at the St. Mungo room had ended up disarming everyone and melting their arguments in their throats. If their union had survived a war, it'd surely survive a premature wedding.

* * *

Two weeks had passed since she'd last seen Snape; he'd been absorbed by his ranks and his Auror's strategies, and she was surrounded by Ginevra and Harry's wedding plans.

She knocked the worn wooden door; he was behind, and a sudden euphoria made her jump to surround him with her arms. She breathed in the black hair until it stuck in her nostrils; it smelled like sour roots, as always.

"How are you?"

The half-blood raised his brows, indicating that he just 'was'. He stepped aside to let her inside the gloomy house; on the table, there was a mountain of open books, of manuscripts and loose papers. Apparently, the man had been really busy; Hermione offered to help, and in a matter of minutes she was in a room on the second floor, looking in the books something with Greek or Latin roots that may help for summoning spells.

After a while, sticking her nose in books, she had already spread a lot of them on the desk, and even on the bed; she was writing in a paper any linguistic root she thought she might be useful. They'd have to try them all.

She hadn't heard any noise from downstairs; she supported herself against the desk for a moment and turned on the lamp. It had started to rain and dusk was near; a smell of wet soil came from the street; far away some lamps were struck by rain. She stood there, watching the destruction of the water drips against the pavement and the people running around, covering themselves with brollies or coats. The sky was a grey, striking vault with a monstrous vastness, beautiful in many ways.

Severus was behind her, standing under the door lintel, watching her. Who knew how long he'd been standing there, still and silent.

A black butterfly fluttered in his colourless eyes.

"I like rain, I like how it smells, I like that people go to their houses, ignite their chimneys, drink tea…"

The man was still immobile, arms crossed and the corners of his mouth sagging; he seemed to see beyond the water, through a stormy curtain.

"I like when they peek through the window…" He was looking outside, but not with the kind of gaze Hermione was talking about, not with the pacific observation of the open sky, but with the constant sound of a bitter memory. Snape's eyes were contaminated like two murky sockets.

"Are you angry?"

"No," a monotonous, empty voice answered.

She'd have liked to insist, but his monosyllabic, curt answer left her in silence for a few minutes. The man got close to read what Granger had written and flipped through the books scattered around the room.

"Are these all?"

"I still have those left." She pointed to a pile of books standing on the desk's right side. Snape folded the paper carefully and put it in his pocket; Hermione waited for him to thank her, hug her, or at least notice her presence.

"Is there something wrong?"

The half-blood looked at the clouds, disintegrating and turning into grey blurs in the sky. Hermione, in turn, looked at him and that rancid colour that had spread in his eyes and expression.

A flash of lighting split the mourner's face in half; it left for a few moments one half in absolute light, the other in a dark limbo. Jean remembered something, an image she couldn't completely reach nor rebuild in her memory. An image that had to do with Snape and flashes of lightning. Clouds smashed again like immense ships of smoke and water, a bolt zigzagged through the air, reflecting on the window's glass; once more the light appeared in the half-blood's face and in his shadows, a flower that budded just to whither in a second, but that mere second solidified Granger's musings. Lily Potter had died in a rainy night; Hermione was capable of building that pensive's vision, to put in the right place the pieces of that loss, the scraps of distress that she could feel, that everyone in the jury felt that day when Harry let them see. The same man of the liquid memories, the same man that cried, kneeled on the floor in Godric's Hollow; he was standing close to her, and his face was still full of ashes.

"That day was raining too, that's why you don't like rain."

The man raised his head, surprised of Granger. The drips disappeared after crashing against the glass.

"What day are you talking about?"

"The day when Harry's scar appeared."

Severus turned his eyes to some point in the stained glass, mouth rigid and face half hardened, half distorted. Hermione didn't avert her eyes from him, she just kept on watching his scrawny frame and altered expression.

"Why are you looking at me so closely? Weren't you doing something?"

Granger left her eyes on him and patiently stood up from her seat, with a calmness so perfect, it managed to irritate the man on the threshold. Snape followed her with his gaze, showing annoyance and surprise.

"Severus, have I told you that I love you?"

"You have," he answered with his voice too low and too deep, so much that he sounded like a cavern's echo. Hermione knew what it was like to be the objective of his glares and biting phrases, but she decided she didn't want to be scared because of that, she didn't want to be part of the group that got tired of him and called him loathsome, aggressive or neurotic. At least she'd try.

"I love you." She forced herself to kiss him on the cheek despite her nervous hands, a kiss she'd wanted to give him since hours ago, but the wizard's heavy and tense air had dissuaded her. She felt the cold, stiff cheek under her lips; she retreated to see the pale man's whole face. The hooked man's nostrils were opening with some aggressiveness; Jean flinched instinctively, for she feared that exact gaze from Severus, it was the thing she most feared and expected from him, when his eyes widened so much and seemed to tear her apart and create her again in the same movement.

The white, thin hand crossed the distance and touched Hermione's small, warm cheek, with so much caution, with so much thoroughness, the girl started to blush at the greedy, fixed eyes staring at her.

Snape's mouth was open and it seemed like a word had tangled in his vocal cords and kept them like that: mute. He thrust his head forward, as if he had finally decided to speak, but no sound came from him and he ended up on the girl, transforming it into a kiss, a kiss that asked Hermione every question possible, that asked for everything she could give, that said everything capable of being said with closed lips.

Snape wasn't capable of saying he loved her, but Hermione didn't need that to know it. She'd never seen her professor like this, desperate, humble, forced to be patient, needing something. Until that moment, she hadn't been completely aware that he could be hurt, that he could feel pain caused by someone. That she could cause him that pain, and that she might have already done so. Severus Snape was a man as mortal as the rest of them.

She tried to follow the half-blood shifting arms and that kind of dialogue of his dry mouth moving on hers; the floor passed under them, space unfolded until they found the bed's edge and the spines of the open books nibbled their sides. Snape's arm opened like a wing and threw all the books off the bed as if he suddenly didn't care about Greco-Latin roots or etymologies or words. Hermione laughed slightly at the sudden detachment they'd both developed towards the outside world. Something wasn't calibrated in her brain at that moment; she seemed to see Snape's silhouette over her like an infinite mountain eclipsed by a monumental shadow. The man was suddenly a giant to her, a slow, warm one; when she closed her eyes and touched him blindly, Severus was as brief as his body's existence under Jean's touch.

_How incredible is the human being._

She told herself as she discovered the man's mystery and felt Snape caressing her soul. Some of her clothes relieved her of their weight; soon her sweater was in a distant corner of the bed, like one shell removed. Under her hands, there didn't exist the feeling of a cloak' or shirt's rough fabric anymore; Jean opened her eyes, the half-blood had uncovered the warm limits of his body, letting her see the paths light made on the surface of his frame. Hermione thought for a moment about the childish jokes they made in Hogwarts about the professor's intimate life, and she glad she never joined any of them, because it'd have been such an irony. Some trace of logic couldn't completely believe what was happening; it seemed like a part of her had left the loving figures and watched them from a corner, curious and sceptical. Snape crushed that part when he hugged her euphorically and blew in her ear like a wind whirl. Hermione explored the length of his back with uncertain hands and fingers; she recreated the figure of ribs, stopping her palm on a long stomach and felt movement under it. Ten walking, rough fingers filled her with traces: the half-blood's fingers. He was breathing so loudly, his breath seemed to announce the beginning of a storm. The man was the sun's rising behind some hills, she was expectation and patience. Ron opened his eyes in her mind, big, blue eyes full of reproach, but she closed his lids; she wouldn't be able to hide behind them anymore. Severus' eyes were opened too, they were gigantic, big like their heat extended around the universe, around that small room and over her. Snape was a thick liquid lowering slowly, like an expanding shadow. His forehead over hers, his big nose sticking in her cheek, his stony gaze melted, watching her closely. What was love if not that: a deep gaze, immobile, so close it might as well be her own; it might be her watching herself through Snape's eyes. And then she heard him like a remote voice; they squeezed each other, fought in a slight struggle of nails and lips, she felt him tremble and she trembled and sunk her fingers in the white sand that was him. She ended up splitting like a sea, like an ocean that lets through an meteor fallen from the sky. He was the moon of two sides, disintegrating when smashed against the sea of brown hair, wrecking in the woman, spreading in the depth of her waters. In a scream, both collapsed on the sea of sheets; Snape was no longer the cusp he was before, there were no more deep growls, nor wandering hands or tangled hair. Everything was silent again, they were two again; the human circle that had no beginning or end had dissolved. Just their voices stood, mumbled over an atom of infinity that had existed between them for a moment; they stayed there, spread and limp with bared legs tangled, with arms like tentacles travelling everywhere, with intentional slowness. Hermione was horrified and shamefully happy, so happy… For the first time, Snape was smiling at her with no sour cloud on his face, helping her adjust herself in his arms as if they were a nest. There he rested his head against hers and his eyes dripped on the girl's face; Granger drank the half-blood's tears, which were the strangest elixir he'd ever prepared. He gave her salty, wet kisses, whispering many things, things she barely heard but which made her smile, and she slowly fell asleep, stroking and stroking the straight, black hair until her lids closed.

* * *

She opened an eye unwillingly, closed it for a few more minutes; the mattress was warm and nice. She opened her eye again; beyond the window glass it was still raining, and a yellow lamp floated in the night, the same one she'd seen that afternoon; it seemed like a lot of time had passed since she'd last seen that lamp. Somehow, she wasn't the same person watching it: she had lost something and gained something too. She sat slowly, moving Snape's livid arm, and watched around the darkened room; the books were still open on the desk, more were laying on the floor. A cold breeze came from the window, a wind smelling of wet grass. She watched the clock on the desk, it was eleven at night. She had the wrong idea that it was about to dawn. It was probably too late to go back to her house, and actually, at that moment she didn't have the strength to pretend nothing strange had happened; she knew her dad would insist on knowing the reason why was she arriving so late, and she wouldn't be able to believe convincingly. She got back into the sheets roughly and snuggled, thinking that maybe she'd know what to do in the morning; after all, she wasn't sure she wanted to hide what had happened. Snape shifted under the quilt too, making an incoherent question and then stayed still, breathing strongly. He'd woken up and was watching her under the sheets with half-lidded eyes and scrambled hair. Hermione couldn't help but smile at the sudden ordinariness that surrounded them.

"What time is it?"

"It isn't midnight yet."

"Are you hungry?"

He could notice again the blurry smile Granger showed in her mouth.

"Yeah, I am, but—"

"There must be something I can cook quickly." She felt him move on the mattress and finally removed his weight. She heard clothes' friction and turned her head shyly; he was already half-dressed, putting his trousers and some socks mindlessly. She'd never watched him remove or put on clothes before, and that made her feel a spark of sympathy and tenderness. The man walked, dragging his feet around the room, opening the door and closing it behind him, growling that he'd be back in a few minutes. Hermione covered herself to her head and allowed herself to smile sincerely to the emptiness; maybe she could get used to living like that, knowing he was sleeping on her left, watching the yellow lamp through the window, helping him look for old words in his books. Maybe they could live like that, why not?

* * *

**Note of the Translator:** Well, it wasn't _that_ nsfw, but just in case.


	38. The Prelude

**Disclaimer**: Nothing here belongs to me. Remember, I'm just the translator!

* * *

**38\. The Prelude**

She stayed in Snape's house for a long time after dawn. They talked; she remembered everything vaguely. Severus was warm, she heard his voice behind her ear, his white hand walking slowly on her legs. They separated in the bus stop under a brolly and she waved through the window when it was leaving. She looked at him, standing on the wet pavement; he was pale, but his face was clear with something close to kindness.

She could barely look at her dad for the next days; she drank some contraceptive potions with shame. She had never thought she'd have to use them, not her. But whatever, she didn't regret it, or at least not most of the time.

She kept on meeting Severus every moment she could; they planned on going to some hidden coffee shop in the _muggle_ side, where no one knew them. They met in some library and in the velvety darkness of the cinemas, where they kissed lengthily. Sometimes she thought she was in the middle of the best days of her life, that she would never be alone anymore. He leaked some pieces of his past when that aura of complicity extended between the two; the awkward, tense silences were non-existent. While they sometimes didn't talk, the distance between them had changed in face and shape; the difficult walls he created around himself were never interposed for Hermione. She could say and do anything without irritating him, he was always on her side; he seemed to have lost the ability to be angry with her. Hermione was truly starting to know him, to learn his habits, to get surprised by his existence, his life, his wonderful, wide gaze. She had to laugh at herself, at the instinctive urges to hug him while they walked on the streets, at the moments when she kissed him while he was drinking and made him spill half the cup.

Who knew what word could she use to encapsulate what the mere fact of finding him in some avenue or on the house's threshold meant. What she had lived in the past, what she was living, everything was justified by the mere freedom to caress his face or hug him from behind and cover his eyes so he could say her name. For her, it might as well be a miracle; it was, in so many ways, that he was alive, that she could've learned to know him, that they were capable of holding hands and walking, as if they weren't professor and pupil, as if they hadn't been enemies at some point.

* * *

The Great Hall of Hogwarts hadn't looked so cheerful since months. Flowers on every table, on every pillar, opening their petals, letting out the smell of roses and chrysanthemums. Her dad looked for the table they'd been assigned with some nervousness; his intelligent eyes fixed for some moments on the attires, for him quite bizarre, that some guests were wearing.

"Your friends are there, in table three," he said while leading her with his arms, and he fixed his tie again.

Luna's distant smile was the first one to appear in front of her; Neville's hand reached to shake hers and her father's. McGonagall bowed slightly and greeted David Granger with sharp courtesy. Hermione sat, always looking around; the Great Hall's candles spilt white light over the guests' faces. While her eyes were still wandering around the crowd, Harry's face appeared suddenly. His gaze was blazing and clear; she'd never seen him like that, as if his soul had expanded, as if his chest was full of breath, as if his eyes could grow and span the entirety of the room with his green gaze. He smiled at her from afar, and she knew he'd never been so full and so alive. He was going to marry Ginny Weasley. Women almost always cried in weddings, but Jean had no intentions of doing so before the ceremony even started, and yet Hagrid had to give her some tissues with his gigantic hand, wrinkling them accidentally. The giant's face was also wet, both his cheeks and his eyes.

"Weddings always make me a bit sensible," he mumbled, getting close to the Gryffindor. David was examining the floating candles, absorbed and curious.

"Hermione!"

Mrs Weasley made her stand up from her seat. After hugging her affectionately, she dragged her to the centre of the room so she could take a picture with the family and the grooms.

George Weasley was whistling so loud, the echo resonated in most of the room; the jovial crowd opened elf wine and corks flew with a trail of foamy liquid waving behind them. They were depicted in groups, alone, drinking, hugging each other; it seemed to exist the need of not leaving a single minute go by without capturing it. So long had been the war, they needed to cling with nails to their present happiness.

When she could sit back again, she carried a slight mixture of the perfumes everyone had been wearing.

"I didn't know there were such lively parties among the wizards, their robes made me think otherwise," her father commented while drinking moderately. Hermione breathed deeply and closed her eyes, trying to keep in her memory that day's smell, the constant, cheerful noise of the plates and the extended chatter around the room.

Ron was still in her mind, dampening her good mood a bit, making her feel anxious and guilty; so many redheads made him go back to her mind.

By the big door, Argus Filch entered, talking emphatically and with an expression close to irritation. Next to him walked a tall, grieving man. Hermione shifted positions on her seat several times, trying to contain the fiery smile that jumped to her face.

"I thought Professor Snape wouldn't come," she whispered to Hagrid, half strangling the clearly happy tone of her voice.

"Headmistress McGonagall insisted, and so did Harry."

"I see."

Snape was reached by Potter, who shook his hand in a unilateral gesture of familiarity; it was evident that, for the man with the big nose, that greeting was uncomfortable and annoying. Hermione sighed in her seat, thinking that those two couldn't be helped, and also hoping that the Head of Aurors could sit on her table, but he didn't even sit anywhere; he walked around the bar of drinks, ironically without drinking anything, crossing his arms, face serious and undaunted. Apparently, he hadn't even seen her yet.

"Severus will never change, look at him there all alone and bored," Mrs Weasley commented, who was going to every table, checking that no one was missing any cutlery. "Maybe I should go with him and make him sit here."

Granger smiled condescending and offered to go for the Potioneer herself; she didn't think anyone would suspect something deeper in such a simple action.

She walked to him, adjusted her dress discreetly and spoke as she watched him serve himself the first glass of the night. Snape was just now noticing her presence, his eyes wandered for a moment in the girl's appearance, in her blue dress and her tamed hair; he'd have smiled hadn't Filch been so close.

"Professor Snape, good evening, what a pleasure to see you here."

Something about that fake formality Hermione kept impeccably bothered him.

"Good evening, Miss Granger."

After a short talk, she made him accompany them to the table. There, a group of people who he wasn't interested in greeting waited for them; he'd have liked to make them all disappear and stop playing the respectful pupil and professor. Jean hadn't even shaken his hand to greet him, as if she feared that just by slightly touching everyone around them would sense what might be behind that brush. He was annoyed, he couldn't help it. He drank the elf wine, grimacing at Hagrid and his absurd, tender sobs. No man with any self-respect should cry in public. To his disgrace, he realized the man sitting next to Hermione was, in fact, her father; he had a _muggle_ air hard to hide, and his way of looking around was that of a lost person. Besides, those eyes; that colour reminded him of the precise shade of Granger's orbs. His stomach turned.

McGonagall rose her solemn face and, with that analysing gaze of hers, she was glancing at them all, everyone on the table, the floor and the precocious drinkers crowding around the bar.

"Then, war is over, Severus," she told him while a grimace close to a smile bloomed on her face. McGonagall rarely smiled openly.

The man cleared his throat.

"The end of one is the beginning of another."

The woman didn't say anything, grimacing with soft eyes. Snape liked to make disturbing comments; she was too old to fall for that.

The ceremony was short. Potter's made a speech; Mrs and Mr Weasley cried plentifully; some went to congratulate the grooms; they made a toast; the vows were said. Hermione shifted inher seat when Harry said, "Together from now on, until the dusk of our lives." With that phrase, Snape's gaze had reached her from the other side of the table, and for a moment it was like he or she had said that. She didn't know if she was happy or scared about it.

The party began after the Potters' kiss. The floor was full of witches and romantic songs. David danced with his daughter; Hermione spun under the floating candles, spun until the Great Hall repeated in front of her and she saw the same faces over and over again. Harry and Ginny kissed in the middle of the dance, Hagrid ate cake cheerfully. Snape was still in his seat and looked like a ghost, pale, his face not softened by the smile that was the guests' common fixture, in everyone but him. It was as if he was waiting for something, something from her. David talked a lot, about marriage and magic society and Ron Weasley. She wished he didn't speak so much, she wished Severus' face stopped multiplying as she spun on the floor.

"Dad, stop, it's Harry's wedding, I don't want to talk about Ronald."

"I thought he'd be here, I thought you wanted him to be here." She shook her head. The song was ending, the last piano notes faded away, still expanding on the room's vault.

The next song she danced with Harry; the boy had insisted that Snape and Ginny danced together, to show his recently found appreciation for the professor. And so, Hermione had the vision of Severus mixed in a waltz with a redhead woman. It was to watch a scene that never happened, it was to watch Lily Potter with a wedding dress and him. Hermione felt a pull in her stomach, for what hadn't been, for what should've been, for what might not be between her and Snape. She did love him, she was considering staying with him, but that was as true as the resistance the crowd would show, as the resistance he showed and that she sometimes couldn't manage to destroy completely.

Severus Snape was Severus Snape and loving him wasn't easy (it actually wasn't easy with anyone).

Sometimes she wished she could give him what he wanted, to be able to give him Lily and stand aside. Which one did he prefer over the other? Sometimes it made her angry to look at Harry's green eyes and realise they had something hers didn't, to realise they were beyond anything she could achieve. No one stared like Harry. No one stared like Lily.

Potter whispered in her ear. "I had hoped that Ron would show up, but he's late."

Hermione couldn't nor wanted to answer.

"I thought it was good for you to know, so you can prepare if you have something to tell him."

Snape's long cloak dragged on the floor next to the bride's veil. Granger's eyes were wet with ashy lights.

"You don't seem happy."

"I am, Harry, it's your wedding, I'm happy for you and Ginny, but you're my best friend and I can't hide from you that I have a… complicate situation to solve."

"With Ron."

"Not just with Ron."

"Not just with Ron…" Potter repeated, pensive, and they let go after the song ended. Ginny stopped being Evans' projection and Hermione could see her brown eyes when she hugged her. To dance a song with Snape seemed like a good idea when they met on the edges of the dancing floor. They were acquaintances of years, professor and pupil, house arrest partners. There was nothing wrong, nothing peculiar, but she never met his face; even when they moved their feet according to the violin, she didn't look at him. Everyone could realise, by the mere way she watched him, everything had to change, it couldn't be invisible, what they'd done couldn't be invisible. Even her way of moving should give her away; she wasn't touching a respected, former professor; she was touching someone that had reached much deeper. It couldn't be the same.

"You're avoiding me." His voice was barely audible, and it sounded bitter.

"Ron is coming."

They made a mistake when turning and the girl stumbled, stepping on his cloak with her heels.

"You'll be very happy."

"You're so cruel, even with me."

They kept on dancing in silence, with some lack of coordination. Snape really didn't know how to dance, and Hermione never had any fluidity. The girl kept her gaze stubbornly on one of the buttons of the man's cloak.

"Tell him you're with me. Tell everyone."

"Not here, not today."

The bloody waltz was making her dizzy; she raised her eyes, and Snape was watching his shoes. They probably looked like a pair of bland puppets trying to reproduce a correct move.

"Do it."

"No."

She looked at the corner of her eyes as the Auror shook his head with impotency; the room was still spinning like a carousel.

"If you don't…" He shut himself down and squeezed her hand.

Hermione felt some relief at being sure he at least wouldn't try to blackmail her tonight.

"You're afraid. Don't be afraid," she whispered to him, hearing herself; it was as if someone else had talked for her, she couldn't believe she was saying that. Severus didn't talk again for the rest of the song. She went back to the table, and he went to the bar to growl next to Filch as they got full of alcohol. In his way, Snape was suffering that night. Hermione knew it.


	39. Dialogue with Ghosts

**Disclaimer**: Y'all know it.

A bit of Romione, but just a tiny drip.

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**39\. Dialogue with Ghosts**

The room was half empty. Snape was trying to conceal his incipient inebriation; Granger smoothed her hair with her fingers; it had loosened during the night to its normal appearance and looked like a brown bush again. Harry and Ginny were still dancing in the middle of the room, following the rhythm of a very old song whose name no one remembered anymore. Mrs Weasley, helped by several elves, was starting to pick up the cutlery and tablecloths. It was time to go. David stood from the table and smoothed his tailored pants, smiling at Jean with clear eyes.

"I think we should go."

Hermione nodded and shook McGonagall' and Lovegood's hand to say goodbye. Luna's gaze wandered to some point on the Hall while letting her fingers go.

"Ronald is here, that's opportune," she said softly, as if it was something really curious.

Hermione didn't want to turn and confirm it. But she had to, she couldn't spend the entire night facing Luna Lovegood, trying to hide from Ron and the Weasley crowd that was surely anxious to see the romantic reunion.

"Sweetheart, Ron's here, he's coming here."

Hermione turned around; before looking for the redhead man, she searched for Snape. He was still next to the bar, exuding a misty, violent aura; his eyes were widened, metallic-like, sharp.

She hadn't seen Ron in a long time; at the beginning, it was like someone had punched her in the stomach. He was hugging his parents and his brothers, he even hugged Harry tightly. Granger was full of anguish, she wanted to run away. The redhead found her from afar, still squeezing Ginny in his arms, his smile weakening when he saw her. He apparently said something to the circle of redheads, and Jean realized he was starting to walk in her direction. She couldn't stop seeing his eyes as he got close. She remembered the pain of watching him leave, she remembered the jealousy when he was with Lavender, she remembered the gigantic, crushing wall of his thousand blue eyes during her school years, her mental collection of Ron Weasley's smiles. She could still see him run with a crown of bird wanting to peck his head. She wished she still had the mood to defend herself like that from everything Ron made her feel. She shouldn't want Ron ever again.

He finally arrived; his perfume was intrusive, suddenly the air around her smelled like Ronald Weasley's perfume, everything pointed to him. A group of people were watching them, waiting for a hug or sudden kiss. The former appeared quickly: firm arms transported her to the Quidditch player's warm body. She wanted to cry. For him and for Severus who had to be watching this all, even with a glass in hand. She slipped from his grasp as she much as she could.

"Is that it, Ronald Weasley? You come here and do this, as if nothing had happened?"

"I know it wasn't right, but… things are changing, I'm changing; in fact, 'Mione, I didn't come here to visit, I'm going to start training as an Auror."

"You're not the only one changing, and this is not the time. You can't come here and expect everything is the same just like that."

"I don't expect that; I don't expect that it'd be the same."

David glanced at them, uneasy. Hermione guessed that black blur she could perceive was Snape, but she didn't dare to face him directly.

"Hermione, I know I did many things, they weren't…. they weren't good. But I don't want you to hate me for that you, you shouldn't hate me for that, I'm not perfect."

His eyes were sharp, looking for her face as she tried to retreat.

"I don't want us to end like this."

The girl yielded and let their gazes meet. Hermione seemed close to tears; Ron knew he was lost to her in many ways, she was giving up, she was letting him go. Maybe it was true and he wasn't the only one changing. He tightened his lips; he wanted to yell at her, he wanted to shake her, he wanted for her to stop looking at him like that, as if he was some stranger.

"How long were we together, Hermione? Tell me how many."

"Who cares about that, Ron?"

"Almost eight years, eight. I only left for some months."

"You don't know what can happen in some months, even in some seconds, Ron. It has nothing to do with time."

"Then Snape was right."

Hermione's face loosened, her mouth fell sideways slowly, her eyes were already dripping. Ron hated that he'd caused that. Ron hated everything he had done. He was furious with her, with her tears, he was furious with the small wizard reunion that had been watching them expectantly a few seconds before and that now, noticing the discouraging meeting, pretended they hadn't seen anything and tried to avoid the sharp scene. He also hated the bloody bat that watched them from afar; the git was probably gloating after fucking his life up.

"The hell you looking at, Snape?" he yelled so he could hear him.

For the first time, Hermione reached him, putting her hands on his chest. "Leave him alone, Ron. Don't fight with him."

"If it wasn't for his letters..."

"He doesn't have anything to do with… this." He actually had a lot to do with this.

Ron watched her for some seconds; his gaze was tainted, he didn't seem like the same man who had hugged his family, smiling. Hermione had never wanted to cause him any pain.

"I can't stand that we end up like this."

"Then you should've stayed."

Ronald nodded in a way that frightened Granger.

"I guess it couldn't have been different," he said as he savoured the scathing taste of his mouth. "I was right, Hermione. I just had to leave you for a while, and this happens."

"I was tired of waiting for you to finally decide if you loved me."

Weasley turned his head while biting his lip; his arms were stiff and his brows hardened, as if they weren't truly his.

"Whatever, we're already fucked up," he said loudly, so everyone could hear it. Before he turned, she could see the telling wetness of his eyes. His long legs carried him away, Hermione watched his nape full of thick red threads, his way of walking, and she reproached herself for letting things end up this way. David's hand extended on her shoulder, then he hugged her from behind. Hermione sheltered herself in that familiar touch.

* * *

Ronald swallowed repeatedly; his lids were hot, he felt them wet. He wanted to kick the stupid, ornamented chairs; he wanted to loosen the hand squeezing his throat that didn't let him breathe in peace. He wanted to punch himself right in the face, in the nose; it was just as he said, everything was fucked up. He didn't expect Hermione to throw herself in his arms, he actually wasn't even sure he wanted that, but the way she looked at him, as if he was nothing more than just an annoying fragment of her past. It had managed to reach a painful point.

He wasn't even sure of his intentions towards her, but that didn't matter anymore, or at least she wasn't interested in finding out anymore; she apparently only wanted to push him aside painlessly. He wouldn't be able to discover what was possible between him and Hermione Granger. During his walk, Snape had been looking at him; he was always there to mock everyone in their most untimely, vulnerable moment. He remembered some pieces of the bloody letter the greasy git had written; that, combined with his haughty chin, made him change his path and stride quickly, run, pull his hands out of his pocket. With his fist, with his wand, he didn't care; he was going to break that haughty look tonight, he had always wanted to.

* * *

Ron should have reached there, where they were, but instead he turned around in a rough, quick circle backwards; a spark paled the candle's light, a wand flew some meters to fall next to some tables. Suddenly two men were grappling next to the bar. They smashed against the floor and Harry ran to the fight; Hagrid did the same, but being in the middle of so many tables, the chairs didn't let him emerge from the furniture. Mr Granger, seeing it was a fistfight and not a magic fight, also ran there.

"Merlin, Ronald Weasley, stop right now!" Mrs Weasley shrieked with the full strength of her voice.

Arthur' and George's steps joined the rest of the echoes.

Harry hugged Ron's torso to remove him from Snape, an anonymous hand ended up scratching his face, his strength wasn't enough to separate them, and he had stupidly left his wand in a pocket of the jacket he'd previously removed. David Granger pulled Snape's arms to separate them, and suddenly the man seemed to wake up from a furious delirium and stopped trying to hit Weasley, focusing instead on leaving the crowd of confusing hands, nails and sweat. Arthur and George ended up calming the youngest son. Snape fixed his cloak and left, barely saying goodbye to McGonagall and Harry.

Ron apologised to Harry and Ginny, still half-stunned for what he had done. At least he could console himself with the fact that the wedding had already ended when the fight started, and very few guests had seen it.

* * *

Granger hasn't come back. During the first day, you calmed yourself down, telling yourself that maybe she was still a bit disturbed after what had happened with Ronald Weasley; then you started to remember that you didn't know anything about that conversation, excepting that the redhead hated you. You started to think and whisper that maybe they weren't as separate as you thought on the wedding night.

It's stupid, but you don't know where to start looking for Granger; she looked for you in the Ministry and appeared close to your house; sometimes you planned a date in some coffee shop or an avenue corner, but to look for her in those places wouldn't be more than an attack of unproductive, melancholic fantasy. She wasn't stuck to the places where you had kissed her.

Maybe you were heavy for Granger, maybe she was relieved, breathing deeply, thinking you were just a bunch of dirt in her chest, thinking Weasley has shiny hair, that he's younger, that he knows how to make her laugh, things you never even tried. Granger may be thinking about a lot of things that make her stay right where she is, that keep her hidden from you. You're so stupid, you didn't even bothered finding out her address. Through Potter, you once gave her some letters with the excuse you had to apologise, but now you don't want to ask the conceited Gryffindor for help.

You could, in revenge, go and look for her like the evicted you were becoming thanks to her; you could stop following her plan of silence and secrets, you could go to Hogwarts and disrupt every class, open the classrooms and look for her in every juvenile face, in every brown hair. You could yell at Minerva so she can tell you the number of her house, the name of her street. You could so many things, but you know damn well you won't do any of them and that's the worst thing. You comfort yourself by thinking about the big scandal you'll raise, you _would _raise, if you dared. You take comfort in knowing you'll kiss her to the limits of decency in a crowded hallway, so everyone can see and so she can't slip from between your fingers.

In the end, you'll just stay there, locked in your grey walls, repeating to yourself that you should've expected something like that, it couldn't have been different. That you were Severus Snape and she... she's made of a flow of elements that were never compatible with you. Nothing in you is compatible with her youth; there is no link between her bird gaze and the dull eyes you use to perceive the world. Granger's retreat is the most logical, natural outcome; your reticence to know it, your refusal to start your barricaded loneliness once again is also just like you; you, who isn't better prepared for abandonment than twenty years ago when Lily decided she wasn't going to be happy with you.

What will you do now, Severus? Hate her like you hated Lily for a while and see her later, months later, creating a different life distant from you, elevating the pinnacle of her happiness over the debris where you still look and wait for her? You can't watch that happen, you can't watch and pretend that you don't care, that it doesn't burn a part of your soul.

You can't keep being the same man after her, after Hermione Granger. You can't, and you don't want to either.

* * *

Severus…

And to think you may wonder where I am; you wonder what happened on the wedding night. And to think I said you shouldn't be afraid; I shouldn't have told you that, I didn't have any right, because I'm afraid too.

I imagine you in that worn couch you have in your living room and I know you must be drinking elf wine, whisky or whatever you can find first; I know you must be mumbling things against me and that your eyes are half-closed by how angry you are and how badly you end up after drinking like that.

I wouldn't put you through this without a reason.

I know you want me to tell everyone and I know I should and you're right, many times you're right, unfortunately. But I think about the Weasleys' faces, about Harry's, McGonagall, even Hagrid, and I feel we're both defenceless, both against natural order, against what everyone will think of us, against what we ourselves thought may happen with our lives. And my dad, Severus, doesn't trust me like before, and if I tell him the truth, he's going to disown me, he's going to say it's our world's fault, he'll say I betrayed him, and maybe it's true. Should I be with you, Severus?

You don't have faith in me, you don't truly believe what I feel; the rest won't either, they'll say you gave me some potion, that you forced me, and I don't completely trust my strength, Severus. I can't tell them. I tried with my family, to tell my mum over the phone, to tell my dad in the hallway while he put on his tie. I didn't, and I don't dare see your face, because I know it has to be like this; you come with all this stuff. You, like anything worthy, carry consequences mixed with kisses.

I love you, Severus. It should be enough, it should be the only thing that matters.

* * *

**N.T.:** 3 chapters left!


	40. Circle of Witchcraft

**Disclaimer**: Everything here belongs to Rowling or Gato Azul.

* * *

**40\. Circle of Witchcraft**

She's at the door; the rain's greyness bath every surface, blurs silhouettes, she's like a wet bird on the pavement. He seems to have been talking with wandering souls, his eyes like ash.

"You finally deign yourself to come."

She lowers her head and waits in the rain, watching the grass bent by the weight of the drips. Snape always have something to reproach, his entire life seems dedicated to make everyone feel guilty.

"Can I come in?"

The inside of the house is colder than the outside, it smells wet; there's a stain on the wall that seems like a mouldy map. Storms in March caused it.

"How are you?"

The man doesn't answer and crosses his arms close to the table, like a judge ready to take a seat in a court.

"You're mad."

Again, he doesn't answer, a spark shines distantly in his eyes. Snape barely blinks.

"Say something. Or do you want me to leave?"

"I saw you crying when you were talking with Weasley."

Hermione averts her eyes; she doesn't want to talk about that, she doesn't want to start that cold fight of grimaces and snorts.

"Ron is a close friend of mine and he was more than that for a long time. I'm not asking you to forget about Lily Evans."

"The difference is that Weasley is still alive."

The girl is afraid of what the man may say next.

"I'd have never let you replace me with him, once."

Hermione shivered; on the floor, a drip of dirty water forms and falls on the carpet.

"I'm not replacing you with anyone."

"Given your face, you seem to want to be anywhere but here, you wish you hadn't come here. The door is open and I'm not stopping you, you can turn around—"

The woman's hands close around his cloak, shaking him; she seems to want to punch him.

"It has always been like this, you're always mistrusting me!"

Snape set the feminine fingers aside, detaching them from him, giving them back to Granger.

Hermione follows his eyes' movement.

"Mistrust…" he mumbles. "You want me to stop mistrusting you. Then tell them or I will do it, and you won't like how. I don't want Weasley swarming around you! Unless, of course, you like that and that's why you prefer to hide what's happening between us."

The girl starts to shake her head disapprovingly.

"Don't play the indignant girl with me!"

"You know me enough to know I wouldn't do that, Severus."

Snape's nostrils open and close quickly, lively. His jaw is tense, and his head follows the woman's direction, clearly belligerent.

"Then tell them!"

Brown eyes slide on the mirror, guilty, evasive.

"You won't do it?"

Granger dampens her dry mouth, thinking for a second; she doesn't raise her eyes. She knows how the man's face looks like right now and she doesn't want to see it.

"Severus, we have to be prudent and patient—"

"I don't remember you being prudent or patient when it was about helping Potter or Weasley," he drags the words when he says the redhead's surname.

"That's different and doesn't have anything to do with this." Somehow, Jean feels that argument has a different, deeper reason than just Ronald's appearance.

Snape drags his feet to a corner, where he left last night a half-empty bottle of elf wine. He drinks the murky alcohol left non-stop. Hermione watches him, frowning with distress.

"Don't drink like that."

"I drink however I want."

She covers her eyes with a hand in a gesture of desperation, wondering who made this more difficult, him or her.

The man watches as the woman that had been his pupil covers her face with a hand, as if wanting to erase her surroundings, maybe erase him. She finally uncovers the wall that was her hands and watches him; Snape can't tell if it's a gaze of worry or supreme unhappiness.

"Do you know why you don't want to tell them, Hermione?"

She raises her head, attentive, widening her eyes. She doesn't expect that quiet, civilized tone.

"Because you can't believe it, you can't believe you slept with me and you regret it."

She doesn't say anything, just exhales as if someone has punched the air out of her. She starts to shake her head, slowly, still watching him like a stranger.

"It's fine if we're hiding, it's fine if no one knows! I'm not afraid of saying it, I want to rub it in their faces, but you…"

She half flinches, like a rebuked child, but doesn't move. Her eyes are swollen, turning wet and red.

"You are ashamed of me."

This time the woman covers her mouth and cries shamelessly, loudly, like complaining. The man turns around, goes to the threshold that faces the hallway. Hermione sees her black cloak like so many times in the past and quickly takes it and pulls. She knows that she can't let him cross the door, that if he does, she'd have failed. Her hands wander around the air, reach him, grab the cloak's rough fabric. Again she's in front of his white face.

"Don't you dare play with me!"

"I'm not playing with you," the small figure whispers.

Snape kisses her, his lips smash against Jean's, his dry, desperate lips. He sips, his noise sticks in the feminine cheek, he retreats, attacks again, as if he wants to take her out of herself to kiss her better, to reach her and break their bodies limits. His mouth turns impatient on Hermione repeatedly, like a caged bird looking for an exit, then he retreats as if he has been seized by an unknown force outside his will. When she feels him pull away, she raises her head and looks at him in the dim light, always in the dim light. He's pale, in silence, looking like an old painting or photo.

He raises his finger against the girl, points at her, opens his mouth and wrinkles his nose; he seems like he wants to talk, but he takes his time. He stares at her fixedly, his eyes are black, despondent puddles. "You decide, I'm not hiding anymore. If you don't tell them, then…"

She raises her hazel eyes, stays still, corners of her mouth dragging. Snape still has that air of judge or patriarch; maybe all his years as a teacher gave him the ability to make her feel like that, so insecure. He hesitates, his finger trembles slightly.

"You decide, Hermione, if you tell them or not…"

He lowers his hands and turns around. This time she doesn't stop him; her eyes are still dripping, her arms immobile at her sides, and she's breathing deeply. Her cries are heard where he is, but Snape doesn't stop and doesn't look back.

"You never even told me if you love me," Jean reproaches him quietly, voice like a half-extinguished candle. He goes away and leaves her alone next to the couch where they once heard old cassettes together.

* * *

Back on her bed and facing the ceiling, she could still hear the thin rain against the window. She thought about how the drips stayed on Snape's crooked nose when he stood under the rain. It was peculiar; of all the things they had gone through together, she could only remember one in particular: she remembered him asleep just a few centimetres next to her. She remembered the yellow street light, Severus' black hair covering one eye, his drowsy, warm hand extended on her waist. She remembered hearing him breathe and feeling his weight shift on the mattress.

Shame, he had said; he hadn't hesitated to use that resounding word. In the beginning, Hermione had thought the man was completely wrong, that he had no reasons to say what he said, but with time and night, she started to discover guiltily and fearfully that maybe there was something of that word in her actions.

She turned on her bed and buried her face against her pillow, in its cold softness.

She couldn't deny she had sometimes thought about it, even if it was just for some minutes. She had thought about Severus' age, his unfortunate aspect, his bad luck… The mere fact of having thought about that made her feel deserving of his reproaches. Maybe he was right and it was her absurd conceitedness that stopped her from talking. She closed her eyes and remembered the warm remnants that were waiting for her under Snape's cloak. She tried to explain to herself, as so many times before, which had been the path that had taken her to the half-blood's threshold, to the door of his arms. She couldn't truly say she had chosen it; one situation after the other had pushed her, she'd been going forward, stumbling in the dark, without ever knowing with certainty what was happening. Maybe that was why Severus was so mistrustful, maybe he needed to see her choose at least once, maybe he needed to be a witness of her will to stay with him.

She closed her eyes and perceived the slight rain and the smell of wet soil coming from the garden. She breathed the wet flowers' vagabond, perfumed air. She extended her lungs when oxygen came.

She had to decide.

* * *

The last man entered and put his long coat on the back of a chair. None of the others were talking; some watched him as he took his place in the circle of wizards. The room was dark; one could barely distinguish the figures of the wallpaper. The big table didn't have anything on it; the Aurors' faces were white, barely illuminated by a clear candle in the centre of the circle.

"We're all here," one of the colourless faces murmured.

"We'll wait for another minute; if there's someone who's still doubting, this is the last chance you have to decide."

The rigid, black figures stood immobile. The candle, just like the men, stood immutable in its shape.

"Someone wants to leave?"

No one answered; their eyes were on the floor and they were holding their wands tightly.

"Then get prepared."

The meeting dissolved around the table; some men took off their scarves, hats, some even their wristwatches. The Head of Aurors looked at the group he had chosen and told himself he was right. Almost all of them were Aurors with decades of service, they were over thirty and their hands and minds were hardened for the job.

When they removed everything that was unnecessary, they met again next to their leader, in the limits of the candle's weak light. The man with the prominent nose showed the others a dark cloak.

"Potter agreed to lend it to us; the one that uses it will have the duty to come back here with the injured ones and let the other Aurors know if we die."

The men nodded.

"I propose Niepce to stay with the cloak."

"Wouldn't have been better for Potter himself to use it?" a white-haired gentleman murmured.

"I know that for many of you that'd have been preferable, but I've known Potter since he was a child and I know he won't stay hidden as he should; he'll try to capture every Death Eater himself, and a guard with those urges is not useful for us."

"Niepce it is," the oldest of them all said.

The circle dissolved and the Head of Auror put Potter's cloth in Niepce's hands.

"Don't intervene; if you do, take care no one notices your presence. Your most important duty is to come back with the survivors; if there aren't any, give Potter any information we collect."

Both men turned to the rest.

Many Aurors gave the chosen redhead letters so he could save them and give it to their families if they didn't make it. They stood in the middle of the room and took each other's hands or shoulders of the men around them. Snape and Niepce joined the group of wizards and cloaks. Every hand touched the redhead, who was standing in the centre, and there he conjured the detecting spell they had created with so much effort, the spell that would take them to the Death Eaters' cave and that would maybe bring them back.

* * *

How many times, out of fear, had she stood with her mouth mute and hands trembling? How many times had she feared several things, people, words? Gryffindor, yes, but humane, vulnerable to cowardice.

And yet, to stay mute at that moment was something she couldn't forgive herself, nor excuse.

Hermione, the prim Gryffindor hero. Hermione, the sane, sensible and reasonable child, who one could always count on to make prudent decisions. Was it so important to maintain those definitions of her? So what if she was being crazy and absurd? So what if everything ended up in a disaster? At least it would be a disaster that she had chosen and that she was willing to bear. So what if Snape hurt her? If someone was to hurt her, she preferred it'd be him; she actually didn't care anymore. It was enough of locking herself in the bars of her mind, it was enough of thinking everything three times, enough of lists of pros and against. Enough of reason. She wanted to stay stuck in her love, she wanted to open it to the world, she wanted to be crazy for once and throw all her books through the window and open that bloody third eye that Trelawney told her she didn't have, to burn that old lady's heart.

So what if the others didn't like it? What damage could they do, worse than leaving her without Severus?

Hermione breathed again, and she felt as if she was doing it for the first time. She decided to leave security, she decided to throw caution through the window.

Hermione decided to not save herself.


	41. Aurors

**Disclaimer**: Nothing here belongs to me. Rowling and Gato Azul are the bosses.

* * *

**41\. Aurors**

She went down the stairs. David was in front of the oven; oil jumped on the pan and it was starting to smell like fried eggs.

"Hermione, your news is on the table. I almost had a heart attack when the guy on the front page moved."

The girl imitated a casual smile and walked to the table, twisting her fingers, half shrunk. That was the day to talk, and she had to look for the precise moment; her dad seemed in a good mood, that might help her a bit. She unfolded her copy of The Prophet distractedly, still thinking about the words she could use to explain herself.

She read the headlines without any enthusiasm; she thought she had misread one of them and had to reread it twice.

_Group of Wounded Aurors Arrive at St. Mungo._

In the news' photo, many nurses were moving around stretches, bloody sheets, bandaged men.

She read the whole article: the first-rank Aurors had attacked a Death Eater's hideout last night, but from the twenty-one that had left to the mission, only thirteen had come back. The Head of Aurors was one of the seven that didn't come back.

Hermione let her eyes unravel over the plate that David had just served her. The man watched her, without understanding where had the tears come from.

"'Mione, what…?"

The woman's hands were holding the newspaper so tightly, it was starting to tear in half. A strange noise was coming from her stiff, open mouth, expression stunned.

"Hermione, what's wrong?"

He took her by her shoulders, but she didn't look at him, she just squeezed the printed paper and emitted that frightful, weird moan. David pulled the newspaper out of her hands to see what had happened. He was expecting to read Harry Potter's name or some of the Weasleys', but he didn't find any of that.

"Was Harry in this mission?"

The girl had buried her skull in her hands and there, she let out an incoming sob.

"Hermione, you're scaring me! Tell me what happened!"

She mumbled something, nothing he could understand. Already helpless, frustrated and frankly scared, he stood immobile next to her, just looking at her shifting on the chair, until she seemed to calm a bit.

"No, God! It's not true, for God's sake!"

David stuttered, shifting uncomfortable and confused. "What's wrong? Hermione!"

The girl stood up from the chair like a storm and walked a few hesitant, clumsy steps, as if she suddenly couldn't look around. She took her hands to her forehead as if something had hatched up there.

"There has to be a mistake, this can't—" she could say that with some level of clarity, but then the incoherent sobbing started. "Not now!"

David flung himself again over the note, reading and rereading.

"What the bloody hell is happening! Is someone dead? Hermione, here it says there are missing people, not dead people, stop… stop!"

The girl focused her attention on him; he had finally managed to take her back to their kitchen's reality, to his company.

"Hermione, you have to calm down, here…" he showed her the newspaper. "Here it doesn't say they're dead, it says they haven't come back, you see? Maybe they are, I don't know, maybe they are alive."

She nodded, still bearing a wild gleam. "Yes, yes, I have to go, I have to look for him."

"Look for who? Hermione, you're not going anywhere like that, you're upset."

"No, dad! There's something I have to tell you. I wanted to be subtle, but you know what? Whatever, it's better now."

David examined her with half-lidded eyes; suddenly her change of mood seemed radical.

"What do you have to tell me?"

"My Potion professor, Snape…"

"Was he in that mission?"

"Yes, he was. I'm with him, you get it? Courtship, relationship, whatever you want to call it, see? We're a couple, he, my Potion professor… I need to look for him."

David had frowned dangerously. "A relationship? With him!?"

"Yes, with him!"

She turned around and abandoned the kitchen like a catastrophe of bolts and clouds; she transfigured her pyjama and, with her hair like that, ran out to the street, and her dad didn't manage to stop her. As she reached the door, Mr Granger's fingers wanted to grasp her, but then she disappeared and the only thing David's hands could touch was air.

* * *

Auror Niepce let out words as whispers; the injured people's moans and the clattering of vials didn't let Harry truly hear him.

"Then, there's a chance?"

"There is, I know where he is, I can—"

Some nurses entered the room in the middle of a growing fight with someone that had burst in the room.

"Look, he's Harry Potter, he'll tell you, he knows me!"

The mentioned boy looked at the women; Hermione was between them, looking absolutely mad, with clothes half-fastened and face full of insomnia.

"Hermione—"

She squeezed him untimely, shaking him.

"Harry, where's Snape? What happened to him?"

When he managed to free himself enough to face her, he tried to answer. "He's missing; we're organizing ourselves to go to the place where the attack happened. Others are still missing, but we believe we may find them in the debris or… I dunno, maybe they're still alive…"

The girl smiled, half anguished and half relief; at least she hadn't had to face irredeemable news like finding about his death. Her eyes were still crying and she twisted her hair nervously as Harry gathered several unscathed Aurors that hadn't been on the mission and who, just like him, were eager to help their veteran teammates. In less than an hour, a group of thirty-something people was formed by those who had offered to join, and in-between were McGonagall, Ginny, Neville and Luna. There was too much noise, considering they were in a hospital room; the youngsters talked, the injured ones complained about their wounds, some of them gave detailed explanations about what had happened.

Finally, the ones that would go with the rescue group gathered at the centre of the room as the Auror who had transported the others took them back to the disastrous place, using the same blue spell Hermione had seen Severus practising.

When they felt stone under their feet again, they were surrounded by an environment quite different from St. Mungo.

The clouded day's grey light entered through the gigantic gaps on the roof; pieces of wall were laying on the floor like piles of debris. There was broken wood everywhere, smashed glass, pieces of things that one couldn't even guess their precedence. And just like that, after arriving, they realized men were laying between the destruction.

Harry looked backwards; he looked there, deep in the brown eyes, and he saw them still and dark, rancid by fear. He hadn't seen that kind of terror since the last night of war, that fear that eats you from the inside, that seems to infect everything.

The rescue team walked forward, reaching the laying bodies. They recognized Dark Marks in several of them, only one had been an Auror.

Neville reached the right-wing, where there were once some stretchers; they also found the remnants of a bathroom and some kind of kitchen. The place looked like a quite organized Death Eater's lair.

"They were more than we expected, but we always knew that risk," the messenger Auror commented.

They divided themselves into two groups: one went to the right-wing and the other to the left. They soon started to raise the big rocks and reconstruct glass, hoping to find some survivor that had been left there, buried.

Ginny and Luna found a man that been protected after throwing himself under a small table at the moment one of the walls collapsed. When he saw the girls, he tried to stand up by himself immediately, but his leg was broken and he couldn't move from the place where he was laying. When they examined him well, they found out he was a Death Eater and not an Auror. They tied him up; McGonagall and other volunteers tried to pry information about the attack from him, but he didn't say anything useful, he was just worried about yelling curses at them. The exploration lasted hours; they found, under what had once been a pillar, the bodies of two Aurors and many other Death Eater's corpses around the place. Some of them sat on the dusty floor, hands and face demoralized, without much hope left. Hermione never stopped looking; she kept on climbing the hills of debris to see if anything moved, and she rescued the first living Auror they found. She heard him moan through the rocks. He wasn't in a better state than the Death Eater; he seemed to have some broken bones and his face and clothes were full of white dust. His forehead was bleeding a bit. Harry recognized him immediately; he was Mr Terence, one of the oldest members of the Aurors. They put him on a stretcher made of coats, they gave him water, cleaned the blood. The finding of a survivor reanimated the group, and most of them searched again with a revitalized mood. The roof was forming again as rocks and dust were raised from the floor, like weightless pieces of an old giant. Another living Auror appeared, raising his hand between a mountain of gravel. He was almost smiling when they carried him to take him next to Mr Terence. Granger looked at him with hope.

They found some clothes stuck to a wall's remnants; two men had been crushed when a piece of the wall and an important part of the building crumbled. Little remained of them, not much to recognize them. By their shoes, the Aurors recognized one. The searchers looked at each other with sadness, some of them on the brink of tears. From the other, they only found their tattooed forearm with the Dark Mark. They kept on looking without talking, dejected; at that point, Hermione felt she wouldn't be able to control herself much longer. She forced herself to stick her nails between the debris' gaps, to keep on scratching, to keep levitating the remnants, but she was afraid of finding Severus, of finding him and see he didn't exist anymore. She feared that moment so much, sometimes she just wished to step aside and never find out the result of that search.

When twilight settled, the group started to slow their pace. The volunteers were tired; they saw little, waited for even less, there was just a little gap left to look at. Neville and Ginny had sat to take care of the survivors, McGonagall and Harry walked around the place, talking quietly. Hermione Jean stumbled, walking next to the three piles they had left, crying in silence, at the shadow of a bad omen. In the opposite direction, five people were digging in one of the mountains. Suddenly she saw them moving too much and shouting for the others; she heard someone moving under the rock, heard very dim voices. The scattered people reunited to pull out the men from the ruins; they turned out to be two Aurors and a Death Eater. The group met next to the injured men, feeling a bit better after the small miracle. At least they had the comfort of having found four living Aurors and having recovered the fallen. In total, their group had lost three men, without considering the missing Head.

"We'll continue tomorrow," Harry said loudly so everyone could hear him. "We still have to go to St. Mungo and Azkaban."

"Harry…" Luna mumbled, pulling his sleeve softly. Mr Terence had opened his eyes and wanted to speak to him. The boy bent by the waist over the man to hear his dull voice.

"Found everyone?"

The boy nodded slightly, without any satisfaction. "But some died, and professor… the Head Auror doesn't seem to be here."

The man's fixed eyes showed understanding. "Mr Snape was the only one of us that knew how to do what they did, turn into smoke, fly without a wand. They left through the roof, him and two Death Eaters, they probably didn't go far. We didn't want anyone getting away and he went after them."

Potter put a friendly hand on his shoulder.

"Thank you."

When he stood up, a circle formed around himself; as Snape was gone, all authority seemed to be on him.

"It's already dark; a third of us will take care of the injured ones, another will go to St. Mungo for help. We can apparate with them in that state, it wouldn't be wise. The last third will take the Death Eaters to Azkaban. I'll go with the third group, I'll like Neville with me, Ginny, Hermione—"

The girl refused loudly; a bunch of head turned to look at her, curious. "I can't go with you, Harry. I'll keep looking for Snape.

"Hermione, we really don't know where he might be, and it's not going to be easy if it's dark too, much less if you go alone—"

She interrupted him insistently; there was no intention of giving up in her expression. It was the opposite: she seemed to be swelling with anger, or maybe desperation.

"I don't care if no one comes with me, I don't care about the light, Harry…"

She had said his name as if she'd whispered it alone, as if she was asking for his help in a begging moment. She talked to him, but when she did, her eyes averted to the rest, who were watching her carefully.

She reviewed the gazes around her and found strength in Harry's green, in Lily's green that was inevitably tied to Severus.

"Do what you have to do, I can't stop looking."

What was the word that named their nights under the bed in the house arrest, their anguished, hungry vigils when they seemed to have been abandoned? What was the name of the space of music and disks they had shared? What phrase could capture that thing she had in her chest, swelling and fighting to be released through her mouth, there, in front of all those people.

"I'm not leaving Severus alone again..."

Harry opened his mouth unconsciously.

"It's not 'professor Snape' for me anymore, he hasn't been for a long time. I want you to know it, I'm not going to hide it, I don't want to hide it."

Minerva blinked repeatedly, moved forward with drowsy rationality, seemed to think about doing something, but finally could only stay stunned. Ginny, on her side, seemed as if someone had punched her right in the stomach and didn't have air to say anything. Luna just sighed; what Hermione had said seemed logical and natural to her.

"Well, when we find professor Snape we can congratulate you both." The radish earrings clinked when she moved her head; her comment burst the fragile bubble of contained tension.

"Hermione!" Ginevra scolded her with a low scream that sounded more like a screech.

"I have to keep looking for him," the bushy-haired girl squeezed her wand and turned her back on the rest, walking with quick, determined steps to the building's edge without anybody trying to follow her until her figure disappeared in the night. Only then Harry woke up from his haze and followed her trail, McGonagall and Luna behind him. The night was slow, and London city was going to be a place too big for Hermione to sweep alone.

* * *

**N.T.:** One chapter left!


	42. The Beauty and the Beast

**Disclaimer**: Everything here belongs to Rowling and Gato Azul. I just had the privilege of sharing it with you.

* * *

**42\. The Beauty and the Beast**

Snape stands up from the floor and watches them; none of them is still alive.

He raises his head; the roof is perforated, they got in through that hole, but the sky is no longer black. He can see beyond the gaps an orange extension, full of clouds. He lowers his gaze to the hole where he entered, firing bolts with those two who aren't moving anymore. They seem to be in a _muggle_ bar, a seedy bar, maybe abandoned, surely abandoned; he knows it by the old, dusty colour of the furniture and worn wood. He supports himself against a bar and feels something crushing his ribs and lungs; he sinks his nails in the table's edge and stays there, half of his body on the table. Close to his face, the machine still exudes a smell of alcohol that makes him sick. He can't hear anything, just his own body inhaling air with an animal-like sound, something he finds strange. He sees an amber drip coming from the machine and extending like an eye, then falling on the floor's dirt. Everything smells like piss and beer; he himself has a penetrating odour too.

He doesn't know how much time has passed, he doesn't know where he is. He separates himself from the bar and holds his weight with just one hand grabbing a chair. He disappears.

He falls like a rough lump, then vomits. If Hermione sees him like this… well, she may not come back. He still thinks about the last thing she said, that he had never shown whether he loved her.

He drags himself through the floor a bit and gets dirty; he tries to think, but his brain is going through a murky path that is taking him nowhere. No, he really can't remember ever telling her a clearly affectionate word; he was always surrounded by ambiguity, always keeping a certain level of uncertainty. He stays still and breathes; air gets stuck halfway and Snape snorts, growls, again he hauls himself, but his arms are getting weaker and he has to stop. Why does he behave like that? Why did he never tell her? He smiles to himself ironically and spits, but it turns out contaminated with a brown, thick liquid. Well, maybe it's time to talk honestly; deep down he knows damn well why he behaves like that. He told himself, when Granger stopped being his mere irritating former pupil, that it didn't matter what he may feel for her, Granger would never accept him, but Granger did. Then Severus told himself that she might pretend to love him for some time and that she'd finally leave, but Granger didn't. Finally, Severus told himself she was embarrassed by him and that she'd end up leaving; actually, at that point, he doesn't know if the girl has finally gotten tired of his bullshit.

He turns on his back to catch his breath, now he can smell something humid, like a room locked for too long; he recognises the dripping, grey roof. What the bloody hell is he doing there? He definitely is not thinking clearly, appearing in his parent's house, in Spinner's End. He has nothing to do there, maybe it's just a habit. After his drastic meetings with the Dark Lord, he always ended up on that floor, looking at precisely that roof, then he had to cope alone and in secret.

Hermione…

If Hermione were there, maybe he would finally stop being a liar, maybe he'd finally stop pretending he doesn't care about her. He closes his eyes; he feels he's falling asleep and pain slips away, floating out of him. He never told her the truth because he doesn't want her to know, he doesn't want her to know how desperate he is, he doesn't want her to know how vulnerable he is in her hands.

He can't let her mock him, take advantage of him, feel disdain for him… He smirks to himself again; Hermione wouldn't do that, stupid Severus Snape.

The same thing had happened with Lily, that mistake is on him, the fact he's alone in that instant is his responsibility. Truth always hurts. He can't lift his lids, suddenly he can't do anything. No one will look for him in Spinner's End, no one will suspect he's there. He knows what caused that and he laughs again, but it sounds suffocated. He coughs, something wet and warm drips from his mouth. Who knows, maybe if he saw Hermione again, he would tell her the sentence he has never said, that he promised himself he wouldn't say. It doesn't matter if she plays with him, it doesn't matter if she doesn't really want him. He never let her touch him, he never let her see him, he never removed his masks and mirrors.

If he doesn't move, he will never see her again. He lays on his side, wanting to stand up.

Fear, that is what has filled him with scars, what has enveloped him: fear to see he is a failure. He holds himself against the wall, pulls to stands up, stays hugged to the wall. A failure… he will be a failure if he allows it to happen again, if he lets Hermione turn into Lily.

He extends his cloak and inhales. If he doesn't split in that apparition, he will do what he had to do so many years ago: he will change, despite himself, even if it hurts to face all the bitterness he has accumulated over the years. Even if it hurts to finally understand that James Potter wasn't the main person to blame for the fact that Lily hadn't loved him: it was him.

* * *

Luna guided them to an old bar scarcely illuminated, light entered through two holes in the roof. In that corner smelling of yeast, they had found two Death Eaters who had clearly smashed through the building's roof, but there wasn't anyone else apart from the dead. The atmosphere was heavy, dense, watered with persistent smells. Hermione sat on the floor, almost under some of the worn tables; her cheeks were wet again, she'd thought for an instant he'd be there. Luna and McGonagall surrounded both Gryffindors, and the blonde girl also sat on the dusty, cold floor.

"Severus wanted me to tell everyone what was happening, he wanted us to stop hiding, but I didn't listen to him, I wasn't sure I wanted people to know…" She covered her eyes with a hand. "I should've talked, now I can't find him, he didn't say goodbye, he didn't tell me anything about this mission because he thought I didn't care enough to face you." When she raised her eyes, Luna was staring at her with her blue gaze. McGonagall's shoulders were still, as if she was holding something really heavy. Harry was looking forward, tightening his jaw.

"The professor couldn't have vanished; he has to be somewhere and I think he was here, we have to keep looking," Potter stood up and started to look around, getting in a small cellar standing on the back.

The women stayed under the table. Lovegood put a hand on her shoulder, a warm, light hand.

"I didn't have any idea, Miss Granger; you could've told me. Severus is a good man despite everything, I guess we don't have any right to judge you. You're an adult now," McGonagall murmured, eyes shadowed and brows joined in the centre of her forehead, signalling worry.

Hermione didn't say anything; she looked at her hands and feet, eyes absent.

"I thought I didn't love him enough, I thought I just felt companionship or compassion, but I'm understanding now I won't be able to live without seeing him."

* * *

In the emptiness, a lump of black clothes appeared, a whirl of shreds that turned out to be a man; a nurse yelled before she recognized him as an Auror. He walked strangely, with much effort; he looked at the woman in white with threatening eyes and mouth open like a wet hole.

One got close to him, walking between the others, hesitating, raising a hand but without having the courage to touch him.

"Who are you?"

* * *

The women in white walked in the hallway with light feet; the patient's collective breathing blew like a pacific wind of many voices, as the hospital's own whisper.

A group of four people penetrate the room's quietness, they come in silence just like the women in white. The people forming it has stiff, inexpressive faces, they're tired. Potter walks forward and talks to one of the older nurses; the woman looks at him with such happiness, Harry doesn't understand it and doesn't answer it.

"We don't know where the Head Auror is, I guess—"

"He's here, Mr Potter," she interrupts him, tilting her head and smiling.

The green-eyed boy stops for a moment, widening his eyes, seeming to grow a bit.

"Here?"

"Yes, Mr Potter. He arrived this afternoon on his own feet."

"Oh," the man exhales.

There, sharpened by the windows' light, a long, brief frame stands still; the sullen man's eyes are watching him, Harry could recognise him anywhere. Behind him, he heard Hermione's voice expel a shrill, short yell. He looks at her and feels the air of her trail when she runs next to him. Harry watches her reach the man who is holding a gauze against his shoulder, who let go the bloody cloth as Hermione surrounds him, as Hermione, right in front of everyone, kiss him right on the mouth.

Some Aurors, woken up by the noise, watch them and half-smile, surprised to see their bitter boss holding with his healthy arm the small woman, burying his face in her long hair and caressing with an anxious gesture — that they had never seen nor imagined in him— the curly threads that formed the brown mane.

Next to the door, Potter stays static, fighting against himself, gobsmacked, happy and somehow uncomfortable. One thing is to hear there is something between her and Snape, and another one is to see so abruptly, so absolutely the constant kisses she gives him and how the Occlumens holds her head against someone with so much force for the first time, touching someone, looking at someone with such fiery eyes.

The lovers soften their hands and stand in silence for a moment, turning their eyes to the others, waiting to see what they have to say. Snape sank his eyes defiantly on Potter, firmly. Harry looks at the couple alternately, still not believing it; McGonagall stays in a prudent silence. Luna was smiling weakly.

"Hermione…" he shrugs, looking at them again. "If you… I won't do anything against you, I'm your friend and professor Snape's."

The girl smiles at him and the man stands still, still watching Harry with wariness. They are still in silence when a spark blinds them; several nurses try to stop the photographer and the woman dressed in gaudy green behind him. Severus makes a crude grimace and Harry feels the urges to get out of there, but it's too late. Next day, Snape and Granger unfortunately appear in one of the _Prophet's_ articles; the headline has an annoying title, something like "Hermione Granger, gold-digger" where they talk about her as a little seductress who, unsatisfied with her affair with Potter, the boy who lived, is going for her next victim, the Head Auror.

David Granger finds that newspaper in front of his door like every previous day and sees his daughter in one of the pages, there, with bright, widened eyes by the flash's spark, holding that man's hand, Snape's, who he never truly liked.

In the Burrow, a ruckus unleashes, printed pages flying everywhere, initiated by Ron Weasley. The redhead's family explosion ends up with young Ron tied against a chair by his brothers and father, hearing a long, frayed chatter from Molly.

In Hogwarts, the faculty started a series of rumours about reinforcing the prohibitions of establishing 'professor and pupil' relationship beyond academical business; the gossip reached such a level, even Albus Dumbledore's portrait had to intervene in a Professors' meeting, saying he was sure Snape and Miss Granger had never established any kind of contact while the man was her professor and that they should all stop being such prudes and be glad for their colleagues' luck.

* * *

Hermione wasn't the same in the eyes of other people; who would've imagined Gryffindor's prefect with a former professor of hers, almost twenty years her senior? Even the Slytherin paid attention to her when she walked by, some with curiosity, others with some implicit mocking.

Granger never seemed apologetic; she walked through the hallways as if she didn't know anything they were saying about her, or as if she didn't care. She'd soon graduate and be free of teenaged gossip. Hermione is not the same as eight years ago, she's not going to hide in a bathroom because other people make fun of her, no. She's going to go to the Great Hall to show her Prefect's badge and fearlessly face anyone who turns to see her. There were people who she owed explanations, but not them, none of those who stood watching her with that smugness and mean-spirited smirk.

Hermione thought—when she had to replace her parent's memories—that she would never have to be apart from them, that if the war ended and she survived there would be no reason to stay away like that, and yet that night came, when David felt betrayed by his daughter and it was, in fact, the second time. Hermione's mum, Jean, had flown for hours to reach England after her husband had called her. Both were there—David and Jean—watching her glum daughter and that sombre man sitting next to her.

Mr Granger said many things; he started to talk furiously, then he stopped next to the wall, sweeping his fingers through his hair as if he wanted to attack someone but had to contain himself. He pointed Hermione and that bastard with a finger, started to raise his voice, moving quickly in the small room, putting his finger again in front of the grieving man's eyes. He felt desperate by his long silence and his face's severe expression that didn't change; he didn't want his daughter, his only child, to end up with a man like that, maybe only three or four years younger than him. He stood in front of the presumed wizard, talking to him harshly. Hermione intervened, raising her hands and trying to calm him down, putting herself between them as if to protect the wizard, and repeated over and over again to David to calm down, that he didn't know her professor.

In the disappointment and rage's conclusion of David Granger, the lovers left the living room to the hallways holding hands. Hermione was crying as her dad went to stand against a window, mumbling bitterly. Jean, standing in the threshold, divided between the two, talked to one and the other to see if she could stop her daughter's departure and David's isolation.

Jean walked forward and managed to grasp the man's cloak; she could vaguely remember his last name: Snape. She watched him straight in the eyes for the first time: too black, clouded like a blind man's, and yet she understood, or started to understand, what had been Hermione's reason for falling in love with him. Nonetheless, she felt something akin to fear, like a breeze that extinguishes a candle.

"Be good to my daughter."

His frown and tense jaw loosened; something like a nod crossed his expression and Jean understood that Hermione wouldn't back down. That idea comforted her somehow; that man exuded a disturbing aura around him, but his eyes were also full of some kind of strength, the same strength that moved Hermione. Maybe, deep down, they were the same.

"Hermione…"

The girl looked at her hopefully, hands holding the black cloth.

"Take care, both of you. I'll talk to your father."

The man and the girl disappeared in a wind of black scraps.

* * *

She appears in the middle of the living room with her luggage; she hadn't expected to leave her house that way, she hadn't expected to see herself thrown out and having to meet her mum in some clandestine coffee shop so David won't see them and initiate a cold war of retaliation against his wife for turning to the enemy's side.

Severus watches her from the other corner and senses—even if he can see her clearly from there— that her eyes are wet.

Now Hermione will live with him; he can feel her still debating, luggage in hand, with her long, limp and worn sweater on her. He knows she's not happy and some guilt climbs his throat like worms. Hermione looks at the empty walls with a certain depressed air and finally, her gaze's dull path ends upon him. Snape fears that look, he's afraid the girl's disappointment will stay there over his face as she watches the man for whom she decided to leave her house. He's afraid she'll regret it, but Hermione's eyes lighten on him; it seems like a firefly appeared inside her. She opens her hand and the case falls, causing a heavy noise. Her eyes fade when she sees him there, expectant, a bit uneasy for receiving her in his house.

"So, here's where I'll live."

Her face is soft and fragile, half-painted with joy, half-transparent with unhappiness; she has paid the price of quarrelling with her father, some of her teachers, and collapsing almost irreversibly with Ronald Weasley. She knows Ginny and Molly still love her, but there's an awkward silence full of reproach forming between them every time she meets them somewhere.

Severus watches as a tear falls from her eye and she cleans it quickly, shrugging it off. She walks towards him, covering herself with his arms and breathing against his neck. She kisses his scar in the hallway's threshold.

"Here's where I'll live with you."

"I'm sorry for what happened."

She hugs him; he barely smells like herbs, he barely smells like anything, but he's warm, she feels the core of his heart throbbing against her hand and she tells herself everyone can repudiate her and it won't matter, it won't matter for her. She's not afraid of loving Severus Snape, even if she knows the rest of them doesn't understand it.

"I'm not. Whatever has to happen, so be it."

He hugs her and they stay intertwined, hands flying on the air, squeezing each other. A faint fight starts, she loves him when he sinks her in his body's warmth, when they tenderly wrestle and end up smashing against a wall or fall over something. Sometimes they stumble against the stairs and they end up sitting on the cold floor; they let go slowly and then leave to the kitchen for a cup of coffee, or they go to the sofa and dive deeper. His hands wander like two watery shadows; she knows him with her eyes closed. She detects him by his faint perfume, kisses him in the darkness of her lids. She feels him moving; it's like a swell of dunes, shifting dunes, warm, smooth, firm. Then she opens her eyes and there are no dunes or geography; it's just him, with his eyes like a pit. No one could understand that she loves him, because no one looks at him like that, as she learned to look at him.

* * *

Both hesitated at the beginning, but they're there, in her graduation ceremony. She naturally had to go; her mum was the only one of her family who chose to go with her; he was invited for his years of service in the school. Somehow, it seems like part of the crowd is morbidly waiting to see some scene with them involved; Rita Skeeter's tabloids managed to attract general curiosity.

Those boring speeches finally end; the multitude stands up from the chairs, relieved. Granger and Snape meet between the crowd; they notice some eyes watching them; they gaze at each other eyes, holding their hands like an old marriage. Hermione faces the Weasleys again, who came for Ginevra's graduation; she feels Severus' arm hold her tightly, she feels the redhead's eyes on her, and she hugs his cloak. The day will come where the rest see them as a normal couple and stop those murmurs and reproachful gazes, but it won't be today. They're still staring down at them.

The half-blood takes her chin and kisses her, a purposely long and deep kiss so everyone can see it. Some watch them with reproach, Molly sighs with disillusion, Arthur chokes with a cheese biscuit. The girl watches the Potioneer's eyes and knows he did it on purpose.

"They're not going to make us feel ashamed or leave this place. If they don't like it, don't watch, or put a complaint in the _Department of Transgressions against morale."_

Granger tries to smiles and hugs him in the edge of the dancing floor; when she was younger, she couldn't have imagined her last day in Hogwarts would pass with her, covered by Snape's arms. She guess it's some sort of miracle, that the incurably neurotic professor of the Dungeons and the bossy Gryffindor girl managed to find a way to reach each other, that they could pass every wall they had to tear down and which hurt. No one could judge them until they understood the patience it took to create just a bit of trust, to build some sort of bridge between them.

They dance as they did in Harry's wedding; Hagrid is watching them and sometimes claps at Hermione from afar; she smiles to herself. Snape steps on her foot and she tangles a bit with his cloak, they still spin; Granger hides her face in the man's neck and there she laughs a bit, dampening his skin as they stumble and find out they may never learn how to truly dance, at least not together.

Hermione repeats to herself, it has to be a miracle.

* * *

No one could believe it at first, to see you holding his hand, kissing him, kissing Snape! To see how you pulled his hair behind his ear, to see you getting between him and Weasley that day where they almost fought again, how you screamed at everyone and defended him against Hogwarts' professors, who were still talking about you, and you fought against the Weasley family and your own father, who finally had to grudgingly yield.

To see you, Hermione, had to scare everyone else, because you and Snape couldn't be together, no one could imagine that, no one thought it was possible; they expected him to grow old alone and you, get full of redhead kids. And yet you're there, standing up with your face clear, with your formal suit and hair pulled in a professional Ministry worker's bun, waiting for him every day, precisely him; you wait to see him exit some of the elevators, cling to his arm and walk like an old marriage.

Sometimes, when he has a dangerous mission, you can be seen in the lobby, persistently touching your bangs without managing to calm your hands down, twisting some handkerchief, glancing around, and one understands you're looking for him in the crowd. Then, when he appears from them multitude, you stand up and someone seems to lighten up inside you; you hurry to reach him, forcing your heel's strides and when you met, you stand on tiptoes to cling to his neck and dampen his mouth with a deep kiss.

Time, despite everything, still passed between you, and people weren't outraged anymore when you hold hands, no one is stunned to see Hermione Granger hugging the Head Auror, no one is stunned to see you've been turning into a different woman, that he had softened his resentment once directed to them, that he yells less, that he doesn't hurt people with his words or eyes.

Your friends were taken aback when everything started, they couldn't completely understand the vision you and the half-blood made when you entered some meeting holding hands, they shook when you addressed him by his given name; even Harry shifted and pull his shirt's collar with some clear uncomfortably.

It didn't seem real, to find them hugging frantically behind a door, it didn't seem real to notice Snape whispering things to you that made you smile with complicity. At the beginning, no one could avoid feeling perplexed. And yet they have come to be, with months and years, part of the Ministry's natural scenery. You once told your story, that day everyone was looking at you carefully and some seemed to soften at you and your love for the Occlumens. Luna mumbled that day that you reminded them of an old _muggle_ story, and you smiled because you thought it was true. You remembered you read that same book in your days in the house arrest, and you found ironic you didn't know you were reading the story of your own life.

* * *

_Harry, you have to give it to Hermione; even you doubted sometimes, even you, who thought you'll never doubt him. You mistrust them, you thought he'd be bad for her, maybe he was, surely… but she was set on not saving herself, of going with him until the end of the line; she told you once everything might end between her and him, because Severus was lost, because deep down he was too vulnerable, like a creature beaten too many times. You shouldn't have doubted Snape, you shouldn't do it again; at the end, it seems like his iron will always makes him stand up, and he had, without a doubt, the will to change for her, or maybe for himself._

_You find them in the Ministry's hall. Granger is asking him something as she fixes the collar of his cloak and caresses his cheek; you remember clearly the days when she helped you prepare for the O.W.L. You hear the man's voice like murmur between grass, and Hermione holds his arm. You enter the Ministry as they exit; Jean manages to see you through the crystal gates and she smiles at you like she did when you were children, and you know it's a genuine smile. In the end, Granger was right, she always is. She was the one who discovered that Snape was the half-blood prince, she was the Beauty who had the patience and strength to go into the Beast's black labyrinth, just to finally realise such thing never existed at all._

* * *

**Translator's Note:** This is it, folks. Thank you very much for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. As the author was explaining, the relationship between the fanfic and the original story (both the storybook and the Disney movie) was this, in case it wasn't too clear:

1.- Bella has to stay with the Beast: the house arrest.

2.- In the movie, Bella is attacked by some wolves and the Beast rescues her: Snape protects Granger from a Death Eater.

3.- In the original story, the beast asked Bella every night for her to marry him, but she refused and she felt guilty for not being able to love him despite his ugliness: Snape kisses Hermione and asks her if she can love him; she answers yes, but it was initially a lie and she just does it out of pity.

4.- Bella abandons the Beast to visit her father: Hermione doubts if to stay with Severus.

5.- When Bella comes back, she founds the Beast dying, realizing she loves him and tells him they're getting married: Hermione fears having lost him when he disappears, and she finally decides to tell the others.

Remember to PM me if you want the original story in Spanish. Once again, thank you very much.

_Fanfic written with love by Gato Azul._


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